Eclipse
by SpellCleaver
Summary: Luke and Leia, the twin children of Darth Vader and heirs to the Emperor himself, defect. When they do, it's naturally a dream come true for the Rebellion and the mother they never knew, one that's been a long time in the making. But they have to get to that point first.
1. Shatterpoint One

**Hello! This is my newest fic, which I've been working on behind the scenes now for about a month. I'm planning on updating it every Sunday, and I'll try to make sure it doesn't interfere with the updates for _No Heroes on the High Seas_, if any of you are reading that as well.**

**WARNINGS: This fic (if not necessarily this chapter in particular) will contain manipulation, dark thoughts, violence, character death and child abuse (Luke and Leia are seventeen when it starts), along with anything else I'll try to warn of in future chapters. If any of this causes a problem, please take care of yourself and don't read.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Star Wars.**

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**Part I: Mercy**

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Coruscant always felt simultaneously light and dark in the Force. Dark, naturally, because it was the base of the Galactic Empire, ruled by the Sith—but even the presence of two Sith Lords, the Inquisitors, and whatever Luke and Leia were couldn't overshadow the brightness of billions of beings eking out a life below. Some of them had never even seen the sun, but they still burned brightly enough to rival it.

There was a slight nudge against Luke's mind; he turned his head from the viewport to smirk at his sister. She leant against a seat as gracefully as if there wasn't a trussed up governor only a few feet away from her, her eyebrow raised.

"Dreaming again?"

"Thinking," he corrected. "You might want to try it for once."

She stuck her tongue out at him and made to something more, but before she could the shuttle came to a shuddering rest and an all too familiar Force presence pricked against both their senses.

Leia straightened up. "Father," she said.

Luke nodded, unable to contain the slight smile at the spike of fear he felt from the governor. He was not cruel, not like the Inquisitors—he didn't turn to the man and prod at it further. But it amused him.

The shuttle door opened; the ramp lowered. It was quiet enough outside that the few sounds present filtered in with intense clarity: namely, the rasp of his father's respirator.

The governor gasped at the sound and muttered something indiscernible. Probably a prayer.

Luke ignored him. Instead, he stepped down the ramp with slow, methodical steps, his lightsaber bouncing against his thigh. Leia followed next to him at the same pace, so they spotted their father at exactly the same time.

Vader stood at the base of the ramp with his arms crossed over his chest. A squad of stormtroopers were at his back. He barely moved his helmet to follow their progress towards him, but Luke and Leia had the Force. They could feel his relief, and his excitement, at their return.

They were in public, so they both offered a short bow before rising again and getting to the point.

"You have contained the uprising on Kuat?" Vader asked.

Luke nodded. "Yes, Father. The Rebel spies have been rooted out and dealt with. Construction is expected to resume as normal by the end of the week."

"You have installed a new governor to oversee this?"

"Yes. We brought Governor Trite back to answer to the Emperor for his failure." He wasn't sure what would happen to him, and he didn't much care. The man's negligence had led to thousands of men killed on Kuat alone, with countless more lost as Rebels used this moment of crisis to launch attacks all over the galaxy. He deserved whatever punishment Palpatine had in mind for him

Vader nodded once, curtly, but Luke could sense that he was pleased. "Good. The Emperor is awaiting your full report."

"Then we'll go straight to him," Leia said. She threw a glance at the stormtroopers squad—they instantly snapped to attention under her sharp gaze—and waved a hand towards the shuttle. "Seize the governor and escort him with us. He will need to be present for this."

"Yes, ma'am," the captain said.

_Ma'am,_ _this time_, Leia commented over their bond.

_Always so mean to them. _But he smirked slightly anyway. _It's not like we have official titles or ranks._

It was true. They had no title—they had no name. They were just Luke and Leia, _the demon twins_ to any Rebels with a bone to pick, and that was that.

_We're above them, and that's all that should matter._

Vader turned sharply and walked into the palace, his cape flaring behind him dramatically. Luke suppressed a smile at that as well—he'd missed his father—and jogged to catch up.

He and Leia fell into step just as the double doors hissed open to allow them in. "How goes the hunt for Rebel Command, Father?"

"Inadequately," he replied. There was a growl to his voice, frustration, but it wasn't directed at them. "They remain in hiding for now, but we _will_ root them out, now that the two of you are back on Coruscant." He hesitated, then touched Luke's shoulder lightly. "I had intended to ask the Emperor to assign you to the _Devastator_ in the coming months, so that you might learn how to command your own flagship, if not the entire fleet, once I am no longer here."

Luke nearly stopped dead.

His father was the Supreme Commander of the Imperial Navy. He was the greatest military leader in the Empire. And he wanted to take Luke with him?

He thought he was good enough to _take his place_ one day?

Pride ballooned in his chest. That— that was a dream come true.

"I'd like that," he said finally. The words didn't do his emotions justice, _at all_, but he showed them to him through the Force, and got a flare of satisfaction in response.

"And after. . ." Vader hesitated. "After this audience with the Emperor, I would like to see the both of you at home. I have something important we need to discuss."

Confusion and curiosity clouded his mind—he wasn't sure if they were his, or Leia's. He opened his mouth to inquire further—

Then they entered the throne room, and all other thoughts fled his mind.

The first thing he noticed, as always, was the Emperor's cloying presence, stretched out across the dais like an oil spill. Then he noticed the mural on the wall behind the throne, stretching up to the ceiling, which was. . .

Diamonds. The ceiling was inlaid with diamonds, in the pattern of all the stars in the galaxy. They twinkled above their heads as they walked forwards, their father falling into step a little behind them, and knelt at the base of the throne.

"Greetings, children," Palpatine said, and as always there was a slight shiver on the title, a hint of possessiveness. "I trust your trip was a success?"

* * *

Leia was the one who spoke. "Yes, Your Majesty. We have eliminated the Rebel spies and restarted production on the planet. Your projects will soon be back on schedule."

She knew she wasn't allowed to stop kneeling until Palpatine said so, so she shifted her weight more onto her back foot to ease the slight discomfort of the position. It was always her who gave the reports—she was the one wordlessly assumed to be the Emperor's chosen heir and spent more time in his presence, while it was obvious to everyone except Luke that Vader wanted him to inherit his position—so she was used to it by now. The words flowed smoothly from her lips.

The whole time, Palpatine sat up on his throne, unmoving. By the end of it, he shifted his gaze to the governor, a faint smile on his lips.

"Dozens of Rebel spies were found?" he mused. Leia nodded, knowing it wasn't really a question but that he liked to be acknowledged anyway. "My, that does _not_ reflect well on your leadership, Governor."

Trite, still restrained by stormtroopers, was pushed forward. Leia and Luke stood, backing off to give him space and watching from the sidelines.

Luke crossed his arms across his chest as they watched the man sink to his knees.

"It was. . . a mistake, Your Excellency," he babbled. "Please—give me a second chance. I promise you, I won't let you down—"

"I gave you prestige and power over one of the most vital systems in the galaxy, and you nearly brought my Empire to a standstill." The Emperor shook his head, almost sadly, but Leia knew he was enjoying this. "I'm afraid there will be no second chances."

He lifted his hand. Before the governor could even flinch, lightning arced from the throne and struck him along the torso.

Trite screamed. The measly shields politicians wore around their minds like fashion shattered under the assault; his pain screamed in the Force with him.

Her father and her Emperor drunk it in.

After a good few minutes of agony, the Emperor tired of it. He had plenty of candidates to torture on the regular basis—he certainly never shied away from it with the Inquisitors—and there was nothing personal or particularly satisfying about this. The man was the sort of weak-minded fool the Empire's upper echelons were full of. He was _boring_.

The onslaught stopped.

The governor clutched at the floor, eyes unfocused.

"Get up," Leia snapped, receiving an approving look from Palpatine. The man flinched, opened his mouth, then decided he was better off getting up and avoiding another round.

"You were saying?" Palpatine asked pleasantly.

There was a light touch against their minds through the Force; Luke and Leia exchanged glances. They knew what their instructions were.

Luke, stealthy as a nexu, circled around behind the governor.

He went unnoticed as the man heaved himself back to his knees, and bowed his head. "My Emperor," he began, "please—"

"Perhaps I shall spare you," Palpatine mused, ignoring his pathetic begging. "Mercy fosters the greatest loyalty, after all."

A heavy sigh fled the governor's lungs. "Thank you, Your Highness."

"Then again"—Palpatine paused briefly, and it must have felt like an eternity for the kneeling man—"perhaps not."

A hum, a flash of red, then the thud of Trite's head hitting the ground.

Palpatine nodded at Luke, who inclined his head in respect.

He said, "I believe the Sixth Sister is waiting outside for you. She needs debriefing on the infant you gave the nursemaids."

Luke took the dismissal for what it was. He bowed at the waist, then, shooting Leia a half-smile, turned sharply on his heel and exited the throne room. She watched him go, an answering smile tugging at her lips. They both liked dealing with the Sixth Sister; she was far too easy to taunt.

She glanced at Palpatine, hoping he would dismiss her as well, but he caught her eye and shook his head minutely.

"I'm sure you can see them argue some other time, my dear," he assured her, an almost grandfatherly smile on his face. She smiled back. "Until then, help an old man to the window?"

She stepped up to the dais to take his arm, and tried to hide her surprise. Every time she touched him, he seemed to have withered away further. His old injuries from the birth of the Empire seemed to afflict him more as well; though it had only been a few weeks that she and Luke had been away, the difference since she'd last seen him was stark.

He picked up on her thoughts, as he always did, and chuckled as they stopped before the window. "Yes, my dear, I'm growing old, now. Soon my time will have come, and I only hope my legacy will endure."

"I'm certain it will, Master," she assured him. She followed his gaze out of the window, to examine the city-planet beyond.

How could it _not_ endure? He had created an empire that spanned the galaxy, bringing unity where the Republic had only encouraged strife. So long as there was a firm hand to guide it, it would last ten thousand years.

"I am confident, of course," he admitted to her. "Arrogance may be my weakness, as you are always so quick to point out in our lessons"—he touched her shoulder affectionately—"but I believe I have earned that confidence. Especially given that I will leave it in your capable hands."

She tried to mask her sudden intake of breath, but she knew she couldn't hide anything from him. He gave her a knowing smile, but didn't comment.

He'd never overtly called her his heir before.

He'd given her lessons in diplomacy, economics, the running of the Empire—lessons Luke didn't and didn't want to have, while he studied the military instead. But he'd never been so bold. . .

She bowed her head, overcome. "Thank you, Master."

"You and your brother are the future of the Empire," he confided. "Luke will soon be ready to take your father's place, and you mine, once both our times come. And while I may be significantly older than Lord Vader, I fear his time is approaching faster than mine."

She frowned, a stab of fear shooting through her. Had he sensed something of the future, something to do with her father's health? She'd always known it only ever deteriorated. . .

"I'm afraid so, child," he said, picking up on her thoughts again. "I've been having visions of your father's death. I fear he is about to do something"—he narrowed his eyes at her, a sharp, suspicious gesture that almost made her want to step back from the shock of it—"rash."

Then his face cleared, and he patted her on the shoulder. "But, the future can change," he said. "And I'm sure you and your brother will talk him out of whatever reckless stunt he's planned this time." Another knowing smile. "Unless, of course, you join him."

She flushed.

It wasn't _unusual_ for her and Luke to be chided on their _occasional _recklessness. But she hadn't had an incident like that in months!

"I'll do my best," she said, only half-sarcastic.

"I'm sure you will, my dear." He patted her on the shoulder. "Now, you mentioned that you took some Rebel spies prisoner in your report?"

She nodded.

"Then we will have them interrogated at dawn. I'm sure they will break quickly."

Leia swallowed her grimace—other Imperials' casual belief that interrogation was a simple, effective thing never failed to annoy her. Her father was the best there was, punching through the shields in even Jedi minds with minimal effort, but even he often failed to get confessions, or received false information. Leia didn't see the point of it: it was deeply unpleasant, and only stoked the fires of the Rebellion. Her brother's method was much more effective.

But she couldn't voice that dissent. It wasn't her place.

Yet.

"You'll be present?" she asked instead, pushing the question from her mind.

"It's said that the spies were working for Amidala," he said simply. She shivered at the amount of _hatred_ in that word. She'd always known the nebulous Rebel leader was a taboo subject—her father refused to use their name, claiming they'd stolen it from a woman long dead—but it always surprised her to hear such explicit malice from the Emperor. "It is always wise to know your enemies."

She conceded that with a nod, then a bow. "Then I shall see you at dawn, Master."

"I'll see you and your brother then," he confirmed. "You are dismissed."

With a final smile and bow, she turned to exit the room, as always effortlessly ignoring the possessive gaze that tracked her as she went.

* * *

The Sixth Sister was indeed waiting outside the throne room for him, and Luke smirked at her as they fell into step. "Always lovely to see you."

"Spare me the pleasantries," she growled, the closed mask on her helmet giving her voice an odd vibration. She opened it to glare at him, yellow eyes hard. "Just tell me about the kid."

"Alright," Luke said. "He's a human boy, eighteen months old, and the former Governor of Kuat's son. We found him when Leia saw him instinctively levitate his rattle to his hand."

"So it's human?"

"Yes—he's Trite's biological son." Luke didn't bother to keep his lip from curling, or keep the disgust out of his voice—in the throne room, Trite hadn't mentioned him at all. He'd only grovelled for his own power, not the life of his son. _Rebels_ were better than his sort of scum. "Davin, I believe his name is."

"I don't care. Inquisitors don't have names."

_No_, _they don't_. They were all called by numbers. Like stormtroopers.

Like Luke and Leia, with no last name to speak of.

They'd all come to the Empire with no past, and no future save the one being gifted to them. The _purpose_ they'd been gifted. No one had bothered to give them names—it had been. . . irrelevant.

Never mind that his father must have had a name before he became Vader. Never mind that nearly everyone else in the galaxy had one.

Never mind that for some reason, deep inside, having a name felt _important_ to him

Luke tried his best not to resent it. His father knew what he was doing, and he knew what was best. It wasn't Luke's place to question it.

He shook his head to dispel the thought. "Happy to finally have another human in the Inquisitors? You're not on your own anymore," he teased her. She glared, mouth pinching. She didn't respond.

"Is it still on the _Avenger_?" she asked instead.

Luke shook his head. "No—he was taken to the nursemaids while we came down with Trite."

"Alright. I'll pass the message on. Thank you," she said, a _touch_ sarcastically, "for your generous contribution to the Inquisitorius."

He grinned, and inclined his head as they finally reached the turbolift. "Anytime. If there's _anything_ I can do to help you—"

The doors to the lift slid open. His father was standing inside.

"Luke," he said, pleased to see him. "Come. Your sister has been dismissed; we need to head home and have that _family discussion_."

He turned his mask towards the Sixth Sister as an afterthought, and the room noticeably cooled. "Inquisitor."

"Lord Vader," she replied. She'd closed her mask the moment she saw him; her voice vibrated unnaturally.

"Have you found those Rebel Jedi yet?" he taunted. Luke took a surreptitious step back. He didn't know why his father hated the Inquisitors so much—he was sure there was a decent reason—but he _did_, and he never gave up an opportunity to taunt them. "Tano? The _shadow_?"

She bit out, "No, my lord," with a shallow, bitter bow. "The Seventh Sister and the Fifth Brother were killed on Malachor when they—"

"I am aware. I was there."

"Well then you understand that the trail went cold after Malachor, _my lord_. The Seventh Sister and Fifth Brother were responsible for hunting that Rebel cell, and they did not share any information with the rest of us before they were killed five months ago."

"A minor obstacle. I expect you to get over it soon." Vader didn't need to gesture to his lightsaber or curl his fingers to make the threat clear.

She swallowed. "Yes, my lord. We will double our efforts."

"Ahsoka Tano remains the priority. Kill her, if no one else."

The Sixth Sister remained silent.

"You object?"

She lifted her chin. "I merely think—"

"Show your face when you address me."

A breath hissed out of her at the demand. But the visor on her helmet opened, and she lifted her chin in borderline belligerence.

"I merely think," she repeated, "as _the Emperor_ does, that you are too _focused_ on Tano. She is no longer even a Jedi—"

She broke off, no sound coming out of her mouth. She knew what was happening—her eyes didn't bulge in surprise, her hands didn't scrabble for her throat. She stayed stock still, but it was still unpleasant for Luke to watch.

He couldn't help it: he turned his face away.

When he did, Vader released her. He shot Luke a glance before continuing, "Ahsoka Tano remains the priority. Is there a _problem_ with that, _Sixth Sister_?"

She didn't give Vader the satisfaction of seeing her rub her throat, though it was obvious how much she wanted to.

It was enough of a slight for her to grind out, "None, my lord."

"Then we are done here." Vader turned back into the turbolift, and looked at Luke expectantly. "Come."

"Yes, Father." He stepped in afterwards. The doors shut on the Sixth Sister's resentful face, and then they were shooting up.

Luke fidgeted where he stood.

Vader turned to look at him, then looked back at the doors as he stated, "You disagree with how I handle the Inquisitors."

His father didn't play power games with him and Leia the way he did with the Inquisitors, but the statement was loaded nonetheless. Luke fought anger, but forced himself not to rise to bait. His father had taught him better than that.

"I would never presume to," he said. "I just think that being less actively cruel will foster loyalty for us."

"There is no _us_. Not that the Inquisitors are a part of. The Sixth Sister and all of her ilk are servants. They are beneath you. You should not care about them."

"I know. I don't care about _them_," he insisted. How true it was remained to be seen, but the Force didn't scream a lie, and he would never consciously lie to his father. "I care about the _Empire_. It is built on its servants; if you hurt them, you lose their loyalty."

"We never had their loyalty to begin with," Vader snapped as the turbolift ground to a halt. They stepped out, onto the landing platform where his father's shuttle was. "They are Palpatine's creatures, through and through."

Luke nearly stopped. "Father?" he said uncertainly. _We are Palpatine's creatures. _"We are all loyal to the Emperor—you speak with his voice. Loyalty to one of us is loyalty to all of us. There are no divisions."

Vader was silent for several cycles of the respirator. The sun was beginning to set over their area of Coruscant, touching the metal lines of the shuttle with gold.

"That," he said, as delicately as he could say anything, "is what we need to discuss tonight."

Luke frowned, but Leia arrived at the landing platform in that instant, and he dropped the thought in favour of returning her smile.

He would think about this later.

* * *

Something inside Leia finally relaxed when they arrived at the apartment. While an unfamiliar eye might see it as no different to any other skyscraper on the planet, it was her home. It was where she and Luke had spent half their childhoods, and she loved it.

They disembarked at the landing pad. By that point, Coruscanti Weather Control had let it rain, and she lightly jogged after her brother to escape from it. She flicked water at him the moment they were inside; he stuck his tongue out at her.

"Be serious," Vader chided.

Luke and Leia rolled their eyes.

The door slid shut on the pounding rain and the lift started upwards. They rode most of the way in silence, content with their respective thoughts. It wasn't until the lift opened again that she turned to her father and said, "So, what was it you wanted to talk to us about?"

Vader waved them into the living room first; Leia hesitated briefly, shooting him a look, then followed. He was being oddly quiet about all this. Usually he didn't bother waiting until they were in a specific place—if he needed to say it, he said it—and even if he was concerned about being caught on video, there were no holocams in the stairwell either.

But she stepped into the living room, casting a glance at her father as he stood and stared out of the window. Coruscant always looked beautiful in the rain, bright lights flickering through droplets on glass.

Their apartment was smaller than their wealth might suggest, but then again there were only three of them, and their main home was on Mustafar. They'd only moved to Coruscant at all when Luke and Leia were fourteen.

Nevertheless, what they did have was of the best quality, so Leia sank into an armchair with a sigh and closed her eyes. She had no problem with Star Destroyers, nor the quarters she was given, but she _was_ looking forward to having her own bed instead of having to fight Luke for the top bunk.

She heard Luke settle into the sofa opposite, heard the telling _clunk-clunk_ of him sticking his boots on the small table—then the hasty scuff as he realised what he was doing and tried to move before anyone noticed.

Opening her eyes and giving him a smirk, Leia sat forward. "Are you going to explain to us what's going on _now_?"

Vader jerked slightly, and she knew she'd caught him off guard. She wondered briefly what he'd been thinking about, but she knew not to ask. It was probably their mother, and their mother was not a welcome topic in this household.

It didn't matter. What mattered was that she'd caught him off guard, unbalanced him slightly. Palpatine had taught her that unbalanced opponents were always more likely to reveal more information than they would otherwise.

But Vader didn't say anything.

Luke was interested now. She'd felt him push aside his simmering curiosity on the journey over, but now the moment was here he let himself feel it in full. "Yeah—and what does it have to do with the Inquisitors?"

"The Inquisitors?" Leia asked, puzzled.

How were they relevant? She'd assumed that this was about their family, and the Inquisitors were certainly _not _a part of that. She. . . didn't quite _respect_ them, but _tolerated_ them, much the same way she did stormtroopers.

But they weren't part of the family unit that was her, Luke and their father, and sometimes Palpatine. Not by a long shot.

Vader was silent for another long moment, then said, still facing the window, "You are familiar with the Sith rule of two?"

Luke and Leia exchanged a glance. "Yes," Leia said. "It's not like we _follow_ it. It's useful for staying hidden from the Jedi, but the Jedi are the ones hiding now." She waited, but her father didn't respond. "If you suddenly want to implement it again, hate to break it to you, but Luke and I would have to go because if it's just you and Palpatine—"

"I do _not_ want to implement it!" Vader snapped. Leia suspected the anger came more from the insinuation that he might kill them, or hurt them in any way, than anything else.

"So," Leia pressed, "what are you talking about?"

Her father was quiet for a moment.

"We may not _follow_ it," he said carefully—and the fact he said _anything _carefully was, more than anything, what made Leia sit up and take notice— "but we can _learn from it_. There are aspects of it that can be applied to our situation."

"Like what?" Luke scoffed. Vader turned to face him. "Murdering your master?"

The words were said in jest, but they rang true in the Force. And suddenly, something came back to Leia.

_I've been having visions of your father's death. I fear he is about to do something. . . rash._

Rash.

Rash, like—

Leia stared at her father. "You're plotting a coup."

Vader inclined his head in a tiny nod.

"Oh, Force," Luke breathed. His eyes were blown wide. "Oh _Force_."

"Father. . ." She was at a loss for words. "What? _Why_?"

"He is a corrupt leader," Vader said simply. "He is a _tyrant_. He lies to the galaxy regularly, he lies to the two of you about what he wants from you, and he lied to _me_ about— about your mother's death." He took a shuddering breath out of sync with his respirator. "If he had told the truth, I would have found you all the sooner."

Leia exchanged a glance with Luke at that admission. Their father never spoke about their mother—_never_. They didn't even know how she'd died: all they had was an offhand comment about how Leia looked just like her.

But if Palpatine had lied about her death. . .

And—

"What do you mean," Luke asked, voicing Leia's exact question, "you would have _'found us'_?"

Vader froze, then, as if realising he'd said more than he'd meant to. He clammed up instantly, deflecting with, "He needs to go. He—" Another pause. "I found a. . . transmitter, in my suit."

Another exchanged look between the twins, identical expressions of _horror_ on their faces.

"A _transmitter_?" Luke exploded, shooting to his feet. "You mean—"

Leia held her hand up. Luke, recognising that now was not the time for outbursts, sat down again.

"Palpatine is the one who gave you the suit?" Leia pressed, mind whirring. "The only one who could edit it without you knowing?" She already knew the answer, but she needed confirmation—and it came in the horribly simple jerk of her father's head. A nod.

Her voice grew shrill, then. "And you found a _transmitter_ in it?"

_Now_ was the time for outbursts.

Their father would not discuss their mother, or much else about his past, but they knew this much: he had been a slave. A slave on Tatooine, until the Jedi came to take him to a new kind of slavery.

And Palpatine knew that too.

For him to have put a _transmitter_ in him. . .

"Not necessarily a _transmitter_," Vader clarified. "But a small device in my control box. If I ever stepped out of line, he would shut me down like a faulty droid."

Leia's head was spinning, so it was Luke who asked, "When did you find it?"

"Doctor Aphra found it when she was working for me. She got access to some blueprints of the design and spotted it within moments."

"_Doctor Aphra_? But you haven't worked with her since—"

"Yes," Vader said. "I've known for two years now."

It all made sense now.

The barely restrained anger that had seemed to double—_triple_—after that archaeologist had run off with her life.

How tight his voice always was when he reported to Palpatine, when he spoke of him. Like the words were being prised out of his gums.

"Why now?" Leia asked.

Vader turned to face her. "Because now the last of the Emperor's spies has been vetted from the _Devastator_"—and oh, how she flinched at _that_, just more of the Emperor's betrayal—"and the time is ripe to overthrow him. The situation made Trite and his other lackeys look weak—the people appointed by Palpatine _failed_, where _you two_ succeeded. You are strong in comparison, and popular in the military. Now is the time to strike, while the Rebels are causing such chaos across the galaxy."

"That. . . makes sense," she admitted. And wasn't that ironic, that the lessons of politics and manipulation Palpatine had taught her were now being turned against him?

She and Luke looked at each other.

"But," Luke said, "are you _sure_—"

"What?" Vader's tone was tight—_challenging_. "Am I sure about _what_?"

Leia lifted her chin. "Are you sure he was to blame?" she asked flatly. "He's practically our _grandfather_—we're next in line to rule the Empire—"

"He bred me for _power_!"

Leia flinched back at the sudden malice in his voice, the room's familiar cold dropping to _freezing_. Frost crackled along the windows.

Vader was silent for a few more cycles of his respirator, then repeated, "He bred me for power. And I _am_ powerful—as are the two of you. But a powerful servant is still a servant. He feels no loyalty to any of us. The moment we turn on him, he will have us destroyed as mercilessly he will destroy the Rebel spies tomorrow morning."

For a moment, no one spoke.

"I. . ." Luke tried to say, then shut his mouth again. He had never been one for words, especially for arguing with their father. That was Leia's forte.

But even Leia was clueless.

"I—" She tried. "I think we need time. . . to think about this. Process it." _Stall for time, if you can, find your enemy's weakness in the time they give you, keep them talking—_

"Time to decide whether or not to sell me out?"

Leia shot to her feet, offended both at the idea and the icy, disdainful tone they were said in. "You are my _father_," she hissed. "I _will not_ betray you." A subtle, if inaccurate, _clumsy_ jab at him, for betraying _his _'father', the person she'd been taught by and venerating for as long as she could remember—

"Leia's right," Luke said, "I'm tired from the trip to Coruscant, and we need to be up at dawn. Preferably with _impeccable_ shielding," he added, almost wryly. They certainly didn't want the Emperor learning of this—_if_, Leia realised in horror, thinking of his words to her, _he didn't already know_— "Goodnight, Father."

Vader was watching them. Through the Force, he felt. . . surprised. . . at their vehement reactions, but what had he been _expecting_? Did he understand human behaviour at all?

Actually, Leia mused, she wasn't sure he did.

"Goodnight, Luke, Leia," he said finally. "I hope we will come to an agreement in the morning."


	2. Revelation

Luke's dreams were plagued with nightmares.

He'd seen how traitors were _personally_ dispatched by Palpatine before, and suddenly he couldn't stop seeing Leia kneeling in that same spot, head bowed, eyes hollow and broken. His father's cooling corpse lay in the background as he turned the lightsaber over in his hand and lit it, watching it plunge into his sister's chest, the loyal Imperial to the last—

* * *

Leia woke to a violent distress echoing in her mind.

She kicked the covers off instantly and bolted for the door. She knew it wasn't an attack, an assassination; she'd experienced that before, and she knew what it felt like when her brother was in shock and mortal terror. This was different, more familiar: Luke had had a nightmare.

She stretched out with her feelings briefly to assess where he was, what _exactly_ was going on. Her father was still asleep in his bacta tank, his mind calm in a way it never was while awake. In stark contrast to that calmness was Luke's anguish; he was shielding it from their father, and trying to shield it from her, but that flimsy barrier crumbled easily.

He was nearby—on the front landing pad.

She grimaced, pulled on some slippers and padded out. Lightning flashed beyond the windows, the rainstorm having built into its regular scheduled frenzy, and that was the light by which she spotted her brother.

He was sitting cross legged next to the speeder with his head bowed low. The rain drenched him, darkening his silk pyjamas and pasting his hair to the back of his neck, but he paid it no heed. He just sat, staring out over Coruscant.

She pulled one of the doors open and just stood there for a moment, wrinkling her nose as a few droplets flew in to splash her. She didn't say anything—she knew he knew she was there—and hoped he would say something first.

He didn't.

She sighed, and commented, "You know you're just _begging_ for an assassin to take a pot-shot at you, right?"

"They could try." There was a little arrogance in his voice, as always, but it was an _earned_ arrogance. Anyone who'd ever tried to assassinate them had died, either by their father's hand or theirs.

In fact, what worried her was that it wasn't _more_ arrogant than it was. His voice was otherwise dull, flat.

"Yeah, and you're not playing fair by luring them in like this. Besides, those are nice pyjamas. Are you just gonna stand there and let the rain ruin them?"

He rolled his eyes at that, a faint smile tugging at his lips, and conceded. Once he'd stepped back inside, the door shut tightly behind him, she raised an eyebrow. "So, are you gonna tell me what that was about, or. . .?"

He was still silent, so she asked mentally, _What's wrong?_

_Nightmare,_ came the curt response.

She scoffed at that—_tell me something I don't know._

No reply.

Frowning, she pushed further. _Was it the desert again?_ That would explain why he'd made a point to sit in the rain. . .

But that didn't ring right. They'd both dreamt about that barren, endless desert for so long, she knew all too well the feelings it evoked: the helplessness, the confusion, the sense of being _lost_. Like, for a moment, she didn't know who she was.

She knew exactly who she was. She was Leia, daughter of Darth Vader, sister to Luke, and heir to this entire galaxy.

So she wasn't surprised to hear the curt reply, _No._

_Then what was it?_

No response.

_Luke. What_—

_It was about you and Father, alright?_

It was the tension in his voice that gave her pause, the fraying anger she knew so well but had never had directed at her before. He reserved that for the people who deserved it—Rebels, traitors, particularly annoying Moffs.

This must have shaken him more than she'd thought.

Though the fact she'd found him standing in a rainstorm was proof of that.

She was about to ask him to show her the nightmare when he said, "What do you think of Father's. . . revelation?"

"Revelation?" she asked.

He smirked—enough for her to hope that the storm had passed. "Shut up. You know what I mean."

Her smile fell. "I do. I. . . don't know how to feel about it. Angry," she added, "of course. Palpatine _created_ everything Father is today—why would he ever doubt his loyalty enough to betray him in a way that would _guarantee_ his _disloyalty_?"

"That's a riddle if I've ever heard one."

"And yet _you_ know what _I_ mean, so answer the question, idiot." And, before he could argue that she hadn't directly asked him any question, she said— "The question being, what do you think of it?"

He laughed, but sobered quickly. "I don't know either," he admitted. "If Father trusts that what Aphra found was accurate, then I trust him"—_Yes_, Leia thought, _of course you do_—"but I want to know _why_ it was there. I can't believe it was what we're all convinced it was. Palpatine has never hurt us before now, nor Father. Why should we—" He swallowed.

_Why should we _not_ trust him?_

"You're right," Leia realised. "He hasn't hurt us for failing him." Not that they'd ever failed him, not severely, but that was beside the point.

But Luke looked struck by it suddenly. "He hurts the Inquisitors," he pointed out.

"Yes, but we're above them. We're better than them. They're nothing."

"I know," Luke argued, "but—"

"But?"

He looked up to meet her eye, and she regretted her tone.

Argumentative tactics were to be used against Imperial senators, against the nobility, against Palpatine in their lessons. They were not to be used against her brother.

But she'd used them against her father that evening. . .

She looked away, suddenly unable to meet his gaze.

"It's nearly dawn," Luke said, breaking the awkward silence. He attempted a smile; she attempted one in return. "We should get some sleep before the interrogation in a few hours. We'll probably need it."

"Yeah." She nodded. "I agree. And Luke—" She paused. She hated this hesitancy between them, when she knew him as well as she knew herself. Vader's revelation had knocked the breath from both of them and sent them spiralling into uncertainty. "Just. . . be careful tomorrow. I have the feeling the Emperor knows that something's wrong."

"He mentioned it to you?"

"In a way." She grimaced; he laughed. It was a nervous laugh, more a gasp of relief than something with humour in it, but it alleviated tension nonetheless. "Oh, shut up."

"It's just—" He shook his head. "I don't know what to do. I'm so confused."

She hugged him.

He was wet, and now she was wet as well, but she squeezed him all the tighter when he hugged her back. His downcast, _lost_ expression. . . his tone of voice. . . he'd needed a hug.

And maybe she'd needed one too.

"I'll see you in the morning," he murmured. "You sure _you'll_ be alright?"

She hated how well he could read her, but she loved it as well.

"I hope so," she whispered back. "_Force_, I hope so."

He rubbed her back gently, and she buried her face in his chest. For a moment, they both felt almost safe.

But, truth be told, they both had a bad feeling about this.

* * *

Dawn saw a stiff, awkward speeder trip to the Imperial Palace, Luke and Leia pointedly not looking at each other.

They arrived at the Palace still in that same silence. Luke tried to break it by offering Leia a smile as they exited the speeder, and she smiled back. But he could still feel the tension as they walked to the throne room behind their father, further apart than usual.

Luke spent the whole walk building up his mental shields, wall by wall, piece by piece. He looked exhausted, he knew, but held himself rigidly anyway. He hadn't slept much the previous night, and now he felt like death.

But he couldn't let himself broadcast his thoughts. He couldn't let himself betray his family.

The heavy doors opened at their approach; they wasted no time with approaching the throne. Dawn tinted everything gold through the large windows, setting off the diamonds in the ceiling like sparks raining down. Palpatine was a shadow against it; fitting, considering the feel of his creeping presence through the Force. It felt calm for now—mildly curious, which set Luke on edge, but it didn't seem too relevant to them. Just. . . calm.

The calm before the storm?

He shook himself minutely. He was getting paranoid.

"Lord Vader, children," Palpatine greeted as they stood their places off to the side, Vader standing directly on his right. The Inquisitors who were meant to be present already were—the Sixth Sister's head was turned towards Luke, mask revealing nothing. "You're here. Good. We can begin."

There was a light tap against Luke's mental shields. He instinctively strengthened them, then realised it was Leia and relaxed.

_You don't have to look so on edge._

_I'm trying. Not all of us are stellar actors. _Because he could feel the conflict and tension roiling inside of her as well—it just didn't make it onto her face.

_No. Some of us are terrible actors, and are going to get the rest of us killed._

He flinched, then felt her regret a moment later. Surreptitiously, she slipped a hand into his and squeezed.

She let go immediately after, but the gesture helped.

Palpatine waved his hand to the red guards in the room. "Bring them."

They bowed, and four left momentarily. They were soon back, escorting two humans. One—a young woman with a plait that was half falling apart—walked unaided, albeit slowly. Her pain resonated in the Force.

The other was dragged. He didn't seem conscious.

They were both dumped onto their knees at the bottom of the stairs, in line with where the Inquisitors stood. Palpatine stared down at them with narrowed eyes—Luke could tell he was going to enjoy this.

The woman lifted her chin to sneer at him. Even the barely-awake man stirred his head slightly to glare. They had the same pinched features, the same pale hair, even the same shredded uniform of a project overseer on Kuat. He assumed they were siblings—twins, even, from the similarity in ages.

Like him and Leia.

"Velt, your name is, isn't it?" Palpatine asked with faux politeness. "Omul and Teela Velt. Your father was an overseer on Kuat as well; you took over his job between you five years ago, after he died under mysterious circumstances."

The faked regret in his voice as he said _mysterious circumstances_ made it perfectly clear what had happened. The man must have had Rebel sympathies as well.

The Rebels stayed silent.

"Still keeping up with your resolve not to speak?" Palpatine mused. "I suppose you think you're strong, holding out this long, but everyone breaks eventually."

Luke ground his teeth together—he knew Palpatine was trying to scare them, and wasn't above using lies to do that, but these fallacies annoyed him. Strength had nothing to do with how long someone held out.

Especially when the information gleaned was false, anyway.

"The interrogators haven't got anything out of you so far, but we _will_ get it. If you are hiding Amidala's whereabouts, I can assure you—"

Luke stopped listening to his grandstanding long enough to study the twins: the way the man, even barely aware of his surroundings, subconsciously shifted to shield his sister from the Emperor; the way the woman laid a gentle hand on his head to keep him down and resting.

"Luke?"

He broke himself out of his reverie. "Yes, Master?"

"Begin."

He swallowed. He knew what Palpatine wanted him to do.

Actual, physical torture was not his forte. He disliked inflicting pain. It disappointed his father, he knew, which only made Luke angrier at himself—the one thing he _never_ wanted to do was disappoint him—and yet he just _couldn't_. He couldn't do it. It destroyed him to do it.

But, fortunately for him, he was _very _good at sensing people's emotions.

Even if they shielded information from him, they couldn't shield how they reacted to what he said.

And if that skill was required to protect the Empire. . .

So be it.

He took several careful steps down the stairs, his black boots clicking against the floor loudly. It echoed in the room much the same way the rasp of his father's respirator did.

He watched Teela Velt's expression stiffen as he approached, her eyes widening infinitesimally, but it wasn't enough.

"I will ask you once," he said coldly, stopping in front of her. "Do you know where Amidala is?"

It was a hunch, wording it like that instead of an outright demand for the information. These two had clearly been highly placed spies, so it was _possible_ they knew where the coded messages had come from.

But he didn't think this attack had been Amidala's idea.

There was no answer from the woman.

He reached for the Force. The dark side was a pervasive thing, coiled and hissing in the back on his mind. Most days it whispered; now he fed it to a roar, and felt his chest grow cold.

_Now_ he could feel the emotions, like brightly-coloured heat signatures on an infrared readout. The violet of Leia's concern, the dark, dark blue of his father's pride and the Emperor's satisfaction. But he was focused on the sharp yellow terror inside Velt, like the edges of a flame.

He decided to push for the flame's core.

"You are _Rebels_," he started slowly, rolling the words on his tongue.

Velt didn't react. Her horrified gaze was fixed on his. "_Demon_," she hissed.

"You're Rebels. Your father was a traitor to the Emperor"—he fought to keep his face impassive, detached, from the idea of being in that situation—"so when he was assassinated five years ago, you thought the logical thing to do was become traitors yourselves."

His voice wasn't mocking, but the words were. That terror reddened into something akin to anger—anger born of defensiveness—before blooming into the crimson stain of _hatred_.

"Your brother"—a brief flash of lilac worry for him; good, that was exactly what he needed—"has received no more than he deserves, in my opinion." That was a slight extrapolation, but a necessary one. "As have you. Your terrorist actions and leadership caused hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths on Kuat alone, even without accounting for the chaos and terror spread by guerrilla attacks throughout the rest of the galaxy."

He waited to let the guilt fester for a moment, only to find none. Interesting. So that had been expected, not a loss of control on the Rebels' part, as they'd assumed. Most of the Rebel Alliance tried to be more _noble_ than that.

_Most_ of them.

"Has Amidala abandoned their high-handed ideals?"

He waited for the same lilac worry for her leader, like the one she'd felt for her brother, but there was none. Her mind was colourless—indifferent.

She stayed silent.

"I'll take that as a no," he said into the cloying quiet. He could feel the room's attention on him—Vader and Palpatine knew he'd found something. "To my original question." Confusion clouded her mind. He explained, "You _don't_ know where Amidala is. You weren't even working for them."

Sudden, explosive panic, flashing every colour in the spectrum like the pulsating of a sun's corona—

"You were working for Saw Gerrera." He smiled tightly. "And Saw Gerrera's a nuisance, but more useful to us alive and active than dead." It made it so much easier to mobilise Imperial citizens against the terrorism threat when they had men like Gerrera making themselves their enemies already.

He turned his back on her, but couldn't resist throwing one last jab over his shoulder— "So, with this uprising failed, you've been fighting for the last five years for nothing."

"_Not_ for _nothing_," she spat. Her rage was incandescent by this point. He turned back to face her. "I fight because I refuse to kneel before a tyrant and his executioner!" She glared at Palpatine and his father, then her eyes shifted to him and Leia. "Nor their future replacements."

He swallowed, trying to ignore the rapid beating of his heart as he looked her up and down, hunkered over on her knees, and said coolly, "Look where you are now."

But—

It had been easy to forget last night's turmoil while he was interrogating her. He'd slipped into the role without a thought, taking those chaotic emotions and using them for the dark side, to serve his master.

Now, it all rushed back at one word:

_Tyrant._

His father had used it to describe Palpatine.

_Tyrant_.

A man who placed a transmitter in the body of his most trusted servant could certainly be called that.

And—

_Future replacements._

He was aware the shock was showing on his face, a caricature of just how much the words shook him. He was thankful only Leia was at the right angle to see it—there was a tap on his mind, _are you alright_—

Was— was this _Rebel_ calling _Leia_ a _tyrant_?

Leia would be a fantastic Empress. That was _fact_. She'd trained in it, she was born for it, she was _brilliant_. It was almost her birthright. That this _lowly, insignificant Rebel_, would _dare_ insult _his sister_—

And—

_Executioner_.

Was _that_ what she thought his father was? A common executioner, someone who flaunted their power, murdered anyone who disagreed and justified it with law? Useful only to their master as long as they obeyed? That was the sort of person Luke would _despise_.

But then he thought about it.

He thought of the endless campaigns his father had been on—the death toll. _Collateral_, he'd called it, or _Rebels getting what they deserved_.

He thought of the transmitter, built in to shut him down the moment he stepped out of line.

He thought of the Super Star Destroyer whose construction these very spies had overseen: the _Executor_.

And finally he thought of himself, as his father's _future replacement_.

It was an honour, he told himself. If he was good enough—

—if he was _violent_ enough—

He didn't know.

Leia was still tapping on his mind.

He didn't know anything.

There was a storm in his chest.

"You don't know where Amidala is," Palpatine mused behind him. "Unfortunate. You did well, Luke, to understand this before we wasted our time." Luke hadn't looked away from Velt, face still shocked—her confusion grew with every moment. "Dispatch of her."

His lit his lightsaber.

The confusion turned to terror.

But he couldn't run her through.

It was ridiculous, but she'd instinctively shifted so her brother, now drifted back to unconsciousness, lay on the floor behind her. The positioning harkened back to his nightmare.

A twin sister staring up at him as he ran her through, the prone body—dead or alive?—of a relative behind her.

Teela Velt looked _nothing_ like Leia. She _was _nothing like Leia.

Leia was worth so much more than her, she was his _sister_, and Teela was a _Rebel spy_ who'd _brought this on herself_, _deserved_ _it_—

But even as the lightsaber hummed in his hand, he couldn't bring himself to move it.

He couldn't run her through.

"What are you doing, boy?" Palpatine asked. Curiosity, worry, a slight snap of anger. "Kill her!"

_Kill her_, a voice in his head said. It might have been Leia or his father; he didn't know.

His thumb hovered over the activation button. He was about to switch it off—

And there was a sickening _snap_.

It jerked him out of his daze, taking a half-step back. Velt had collapsed to the floor, neck at an odd angle. She was dead.

He turned to look at Leia, who nodded at him.

Then he looked up at the throne.

His eyes found his father first—even with the dark side rapidly bleeding away from him again, he could feel his disappointment. His gaze shifted to Palpatine, and he flinched.

The Emperor was staring at him with enough malice to make his skin crawl.

He lifted his hand.

A scream ripped out of Luke's throat. His knees hit the floor hard, his nerves alight. The Force Lightning subsided after a moment; through the ringing in his ears, he could just make out Palpatine's voice, coming closer.

"I gave you an order, _boy_. I expected it to be followed through." Luke, pushing himself up on shaking muscles, saw him lift his hands again. "You have never had a problem with this before."

Leia stepped forward. "Master, he—"

She was thrown to her knees as well by the lightning, though it let up quickly. "And _you_. I will deal with you later—you _do not interfere with my justice._"

Luke saw Leia bow her head, saw her mouth the words _this is not justice_, but he was glad she didn't say them aloud.

Palpatine turned his attention back on him. Luke met his gaze stoically.

He refused to scream as the onslaught began again, but he heaved, hands scrabbling for purchase on the floor. He could feel the Inquisitors staring at him in a surprise and glee, and a violent resentment rose in his gut. It was _them_ who were meant to be tortured this way, not him, he was _Luke—_

He had no name.

Neither did they.

He'd never taken such offence to it before, but now it felt like a punch to the gut. He was _above_ them, except he wasn't, and he hated them because of it.

And he hated his father, too, for never giving him a name—but also for never telling him otherwise.

And when he forced himself to look up at Palpatine, tears streaming down his face, he hated him more than anything.


	3. For the Future

Her father took her back to the apartment with a warning glance and a curt admonishment. The first thing Leia did upon arriving was punch the window.

Pain burst in her knuckles like crimson stars. It sharpened her senses, gave focus and direction to the sandstorm in her chest.

She punched the window again.

The _thud_ it gave was incredibly satisfying. There was no crackle of broken glass—these windows were designed to keep back assassins; her punch would do _nothing_—but there _was_ the crackle in her knuckles. Despite herself she whimpered, glancing down to see hot blood smeared across the window, leaking from her hand.

She pulled her hand back and let the blood drip onto the floor. The cleaning droids would no doubt have her head for that—it wasn't like it was the _first_ time she and Luke had given them cause to get blood out of the carpet—but right now, she didn't care. The pain as she flexed her hand was a welcome one.

She eyed the window again.

"Don't," her father said. She turned her head to see him standing next to the table and the sofa, arms crossed across his chest, impassive. "You will only cause injury to yourself."

"Yeah, well, I've already been electrocuted today," she bit out, "so what's one broken hand on top of that?" She raised her arm—

And found she couldn't move it. It was frozen up there, immobile.

After a moment it snapped down to her side just as inexorably.

"Don't," Vader repeated, releasing his Force grip on her arm. "Abusing the window will not change what happened."

"I don't even know what _did_ happen," she snapped.

"Nor do I. But I'm sure Palpatine will get to the bottom of it during their discussion."

"I can't _believe_ you left Luke with him," Leia seethed. Vader had had to drag her kicking and screaming out of that throne room, even after the Inquisitors, guards and Rebels had been ordered out and Palpatine had insisted he _just wanted to talk to him_. "He just _tortured_ us, embarrassed us in front of the Inquisitors—"

"The opinions of the Inquisitorius are _nothing_."

"—and you _really_ believe he won't harm Luke?" She sneered. "Maybe he'll even stick a transmitter in him, make sure nothing like this ever happens again."

Vader had gone very, very quiet.

Leia couldn't bring herself to regret the words.

Her father tried, "Luke will be fine. He has never disappointed the Emperor before, and I'm sure whatever weakness caused this will soon be purged. He is too valuable to be alienated." There was something bitter in the words.

"So he tortures him?" Leia's thoughts always came back to that. Her brother had had a single moment of weakness—_one_—and she'd stepped in to keep him from caving and shattering in front of the entire throne room.

And Palpatine had electrocuted them both for it.

Was it a moment of weakness himself—had his anger consumed him? Had he lost control?

It wasn't unlikely. Anger _characterised_ the Sith: it was in her father's every move, embedded in his very psyche; it flickered in the Emperor's yellow eyes and crouched behind his half-snarl half-smiles.

But Palpatine was always ruthlessly in control of it.

He had been angry at her before. He hadn't hurt her before.

She clenched her fists, feeling pain shooting up her right hand.

What had Luke done?

Why had he done it?

What was going on?

"Luke failed," Vader said, though the words seemed reluctant. "Those who fail him are punished with pain."

_You have never failed him before now,_ was implicit in the words.

Leia scoffed. "Are _you_?"

A moment of silence.

Leia's eyes blew wide. "Oh, _Father_—"

Vader held a hand up. "It is of no import," he said. "The events of today have only solidified my resolve. You and Luke are only seventeen; you have not given him much cause to punish you yet, but you _will_ in the future. Even if you have done no wrong—_which can be debated about regarding today's events_," he added when he saw her mouth open, "you will bear the brunt of his wrath. I will not allow this. Palpatine has to go."

He was watching her carefully. "Will you support me in this?"

She cradled her injured hand to her chest and looked out the window, over the bright night of Coruscant to where the Imperial Palace stood, the brightest of them all.

She probed her bond with her brother, but found it closed off for now. Whatever was going on over there between Luke and Palpatine, neither of them wanted her to know what it was.

She pinched her lips together and sighed. "I need to talk to Luke."

* * *

Luke's muscles had still been shaking from the pain, his body curled in a foetal position on the floor, when everyone else filed out. He was hyperaware of all the mocking glances sent his way by the Inquisitors and he burned with it—though whether the heat came from shame, anger or somewhere in between, he didn't know.

He'd been barely aware of Palpatine ordering Leia and his father to leave as well, of Leia refusing to go, standing stoically between him and Palpatine until she'd been dragged away shouting. He couldn't tell much more than flickering shadows through his eyes, but through the Force her protectiveness was stark and clear; it made him feel better, almost.

But then she was gone, and so were the guards, and he was left alone with the Emperor.

He'd uncurled from the floor, enough to stare warily at the man—eyed the offered hand, expecting a trick or a rejection but also a punishment if he didn't comply. Accepting his offer of assistance felt like a mockery of his childhood, where he was a grandfatherly figure always ready to help him up.

Now, Luke couldn't be sure he wouldn't help him up just to push him back down again.

But no such blow came. Instead, Palpatine—much stronger than his frail appearance suggested—had helped him to the steps up to the dais and let him collapse onto them, limbs trembling with the effort.

Palpatine seated himself beside him—and wasn't that a horrifyingly comical image, the Emperor sitting on the floor with black robes pooling around him?—and waited.

Luke hadn't known what they were waiting for, but he'd complied. They were still sitting in silence now, his breathing slowly starting to even out, his head starting to clear. The tremors faded from his body.

It was only when his headache had almost entirely receded that Palpatine asked, "How are you feeling, my boy?"

Luke glanced up at him, but the expression seemed sincere. Non-threatening.

_Just like it had earlier. . ._

"Good," he choked out. "I mean, better. Than before."

Palpatine smiled. It looked forcibly pleased—in fact, Luke didn't think he'd ever seen him smile _warmly_, without some sort of glee, pride or even sadism to it. The warmth didn't suit him. "I'm glad."

They lapsed into silence again.

Luke carefully tried to push himself up on his elbows, only to hiss when pain lanced down his spine. Palpatine instantly put a hand on his arm to gently push him back again. "No, no—don't get up. After we're done here I'll summon a medic and we'll have you checked up."

Luke wanted to ask what they were even doing here, but he bit his tongue.

Palpatine noticed.

"Come, my boy, has that cowed you so badly? Speak your mind—you and your sister always have the most insightful thoughts."

It was something he said often. At least, the tone of compliment was familiar, the respect for them. Or, perhaps, respect for their _abilities_.

_A powerful servant is still a servant_, his father had said.

His mind was wandering, his eyes glazed. Palpatine brought his attention back to him with a tap and a sharp, "Luke?"

He jerked his head up. "Yes, Master?"

Palpatine studied him for a moment more, then he laid a wrinkled hand on his knee. It was an affectionate gesture. "Luke," he asked, voice just as gentle, "what happened just now?"

A breath.

"I. . ."

Luke couldn't answer.

How could he? He didn't even know himself.

And of the parts he _did_ know. . . he couldn't sell out his father.

So he told at least a half-truth as he bowed his head and said, "I don't know, sir."

"Because I do," Palpatine said. Luke's gaze snapped to his, panic rushing through his chest. How could he know— "You were _disobedient_."

There was disdain in the word, but also something else. . .

Through the Force, Palpatine was amused.

_Amused_.

At _him_?

Resentment flashed through him, startling in its intensity. The all-encompassing loathing he'd felt before, writhing on the ground in agony, began to fester in his gut.

"I gave you an order, and you refused to follow it through. You were disobedient." He shook his head. "I am. . . disappointed."

Despite the hatred, Luke couldn't help the stab of shame at those words.

"You and your sister— I forget, sometimes," Palpatine said, sighing, "that you are not infallible. No one can be. The Inquisitors are certainly not, which is why I see them punished so much more often than you. They are lesser, less powerful, with less potential to rule. Your father, also—he is a good instrument, but a blunt one."

Luke bristled. He opened his mouth to object—

Palpatine chuckled. "Your loyalty to your father is commendable. I know you idolise him—as well you should. He is a great man." He patted Luke's knee. "But you, my child, have the potential to become an even greater man."

Luke shook his head, more in denial than disagreement. He didn't understand that.

"Oh, it's true, I assure you. You know that once I am gone, your sister will become Empress. When she does, you will have to be as invaluable to her as your father is to me. You will be her closest confidant, her most trusted hand."

_She won't stick a transmitter in me,_ Luke thought.

Palpatine's face hardened, though Luke doubted he'd heard the thought. He wasn't as skilled at mind-reading as he wanted them to believe. "There will be no room for failure. You would do anything for your sister, wouldn't you?"

"I'd give her the moon."

Palpatine's expression softened once more. "Then you _cannot_ fail, or you will only hurt her by the consequences of your actions. And imagine if you gave her reason to punish you." Palpatine winced. "It would destroy her if she had to do it."

_But she would do it_, he left unspoken.

She wouldn't.

Luke knew Leia better than anyone—better than he knew himself. Leia wouldn't.

But Palpatine could never understand that.

So he just nodded along, revelling in this one tiny victory he had over him.

"You are a fantastic warrior, Luke, and very strong with the Force. But one thing you lack is _discipline_. When your master—whether that be me, or Leia—tells you to do something, _you must do it_."

Palpatine shook his head. "The fault is all mine, I suppose. I should have taught you better. But I am teaching you now.

"Your father requested you and your sister be transferred to work on his flagship. I see now that I cannot grant that request. Instead, I am assigning you to work in the Imperial Archives, to teach you some much-needed patience and humbleness."

Luke shot upright, ignoring the way his back twinged in protest. "Master—!"

"No, Luke. This will teach you what you need to know. It will make you _better_."

Luke just stared at him.

The Archives were stored in the very base of the Palace, presided over by snappish officials who loathed anyone from the outside world. At least one copy of every piece of paperwork on Coruscant from the last twenty years was stored down there, and working in the Archives meant you had to _organise_ it all.

It sounded horrible.

"You need to learn your place, my child," Palpatine soothed, anticipating his outburst. "You have all the power you need to take your father's place, but you need to learn how to serve."

_A powerful servant is still a servant_.

Luke bowed his head. He couldn't keep the bitterness out of his voice as he said, "Yes, Master."

"Good." Palpatine smiled at him. "Now, I'll summon a medic and then you should go home.

"I'm sure your father and sister are _very_ worried about you."

* * *

Palpatine watched the boy leave the room with a deep sense of vindication.

He'd sensed the rebelliousness, the resentfulness, the hatred in him—how could he not? But despite his father's burgeoning plans to overthrow him, Luke still didn't have the spine to be a credible threat to Palpatine.

He remained, as he always had been, an incredible asset.

It would be amusing if he let this little Skywalker rebellion run its course, he mused. He hadn't had a real challenge to his power in seventeen years, and all three of them would certainly be a worthy adversary. But he'd cancelled Operation Cinder in favour of handing his Empire to the twins when he passed—the idea of them idolising him, teaching the future to idolise him, until he went down in history with a dynasty that spanned generations, was far too tempting.

He had their hearts—just as he'd had their father's from the moment he met him, aged nine. If he played this game well enough, he could teach Leia exactly what this would teach Luke: that they may wield as much power as they wanted, rule over as many worlds as they so wished, so long as they were subservient to him.

_He_ was the master. He always had been.

His word was law. His word was justice, despite what the insolent girl had muttered to herself. His will was the only will that mattered.

He would teach this lesson to them, and they would teach it to the rest of the galaxy.

And if he underestimated the depth of their hatred for their torturer? If he underestimated the strength of their bonds with one another?

Well, that would just make the game that much more interesting.

* * *

Leia had wrapped her hand in a bacta patch and paced until Luke returned.

He dropped the shielding that kept out her worried attempts to reach him once he brought the speeder to a stop outside the door. The moment she felt his presence, heard his footsteps, she ran at him and hugged him.

He hugged her back. He was trembling slightly.

She reached for his hand, alarmed. "Are you—"

"It's fine," Luke assured her. "The medics said it'll wear off in time. They also said that you should go to them for a check up in the morning, seeing as he attacked you too."

"For a few seconds." Her tone was oddly defensive, her arm coming up to rub her bicep self-consciously. "You were on the floor forever."

"It was a few minutes."

"A few minutes too long!" she snapped, moving them to sit on the sofa. "And he'll do it again. Father says it's what he _does_ to the people who fail him, even if we're better than the Inquisitors—"

"Maybe we're not."

She jerked back. "_What_ did you say?"

Luke shrugged, then winced at the gesture. "Maybe we're not better than the Inquisitors. We're treated the same, aren't we? I thought we weren't," he added, reading her objections before she voiced them, "but why?"

"We're better at our jobs than they are. We fail less than them."

"And father fails less than us," he bit back, "but that doesn't mean he's _better_. At least not according to Palpatine, who was just saying how he thinks I'm going to be a _greater_ _man_ than he is." Disgust swamped her—she wasn't sure whether it was Luke's or her own.

Of course Luke would be a greater man than their father. For Luke, who idolised the man, it might be harder to swallow, but it was clear as day to anyone else—even Vader. He saw in Luke everything he could have been, and wasn't.

But she knew that wasn't what Palpatine had been referring to.

She was familiar with the rule of two—master and apprentice—even if they didn't practice it.

It was a rule of strength—and the moment someone was stronger than either of them, then that someone replaced them.

Luke did not want to replace their father. He loved their father.

And nor did he want to serve directly under Palpatine.

"He punishes Father, you know?" she said into the silence. "I was arguing with him earlier, and it came out. Whenever Father displeases him in the slightest, he electrocutes him as much as he can without short-circuiting his suit. Father never objected to it."

She said the words with the half-sneer, half-frown that they both knew so well. Their father's more. . . careless. . . tendencies had never ceased to worry them.

She felt fresh anger flash through Luke. He sat, closed his eyes, hands clenching into fists on his knees.

Torturing _him_ was one thing.

Torturing Leia for a handful of moments in a fit of rage was crossing a line.

But consistently torturing their father for some tiny reason, then keeping it a secret from them? Causing his idol so much unnecessary pain, when they all knew he already suffered enough?

That was just—

"You've made a decision," Luke said quietly, "haven't you?"

She smiled. He knew her so well. "I've decided to support Father in his coup," she said. She knew there were no holocams in this room, which was a blessing—the words rang like a death knell. "I wanted to run it by you before telling him."

"You know that whatever he and you do, I'll support you," Luke said.

Leia smiled some more. "And you're angry at him."

"And I'm angry at him," he conceded, an answering smile beginning to form on his face. "I don't want him running this Empire, and I don't want him hurting us anymore.

"I'm in."


	4. Blue Light

The next morning, Luke had to report to the Imperial Archives.

The room was in the same place as it had been when it'd held the original Jedi Archives, he believed, from before Palpatine had converted the Jedi Temple into the current Imperial Palace. It was the centre for all wisdom and documentation in the Empire, well lit, with rows upon rows of shelves of just datapads after datapads after datapads—

He swallowed. The blue glow, the sun shining through the high windows. . . It was almost a cheery place for all that it conformed to traditional Imperial minimalism, but it made his eyes hurt.

As he stepped in, several officers perusing the documents turned to stare. They recognised him, he sensed, and they were none too pleased he was here.

His father wasn't exactly _popular_ with the officers whose friends he murdered, after all.

But he ignored them, his lip curling slightly. He'd been ordered to report to the head librarian, so that was what he would—

"Excuse me," a voice snapped behind him, "but I assume you're the boy sent down here to be disciplined?"

Ire surged at that, but Luke turned. The woman who'd spoken was sitting at a console behind her desk, glaring at him.

He stepped forward. "I'm—"

"Vader's son, yes, I know." She waved it away. "I'm Ittes Horada. You'll be working under me. Give me your lightsaber."

Luke's hand darted to it. "What? No!"

She glared at him. Her pale eyes were like two chips of glass. "Boy, the last time a lightsaber was allowed in here, Jocasta Nu erased all the data in the Jedi Archives. The Emperor was furious, and my predecessor didn't survive it. I will not have that happening on my watch."

_Jocasta Nu_— "But that happened seventeen years ago!"

"Correct, and I haven't survived this long by taking risks. No weapons allowed in the Archives. Hand it over." She held out one large hand, palm up.

Luke hesitated, seething. He ran a thumb over the hilt. This was _his_ lightsaber, a gift from his father to show how proud he was when he'd finished his training, and he would _not_ hand it over.

This lightsaber was one of the few things that make him unique, _better than_, the rest of the galaxy and Palpatine's playthings. The indignity of giving it up—

He thought of recent events.

He didn't want to think about indignity.

And that lightsaber did nothing to separate him from the Inquisitors. They all bore lightsabers, all nameless, all the targets of the Emperor's wrath—the differences which had once seemed so stark were starting to recede rapidly.

Horada's eye twitched. "Oh, don't be so dramatic. You'll get it back once you leave."

Begrudgingly, Luke curled his fingers around the lightsaber and passed it to her.

She opened a drawer and set the lightsaber down in it with a _snap_. "That wasn't so hard, was it?" She moved on before he could reply, which was probably for the best. Immediately getting himself into hot water with his overseer wasn't the wisest thing he could do."Now, you arrived earlier than I was told to expect you, but I've finished all my other tasks so I'll show you around now."

Luke took a step back as she stood from her desk—he hadn't noticed as she was sitting down, but she was _tall_. She towered over him; even her uniformed shoulder and the wiry silver hair plaited over it was slightly above his eye line.

"You will report here at eight am standard time and be expected to stay until four—excepting an hour lunch break to be taken whenever you want, provided you inform me beforehand. It _is_ a longer shift than most of our assistants are given," she admitted, lips pressing tightly together, "but it is as His Excellency has ordered for you. I will assign you tasks throughout your time here and expect you to complete them forthwith. When you have no work to be getting on with, you may browse the Archives at your leisure, but you are not permitted to leave these rooms."

Luke opened his mouth, a snarky reply on his lips—

"Toilets can be found through that door, on the right, and are within these rooms."

He closed it again.

She took a step forward, into the array of tables and shelves that made up the main room, and made for the stairs to the galleries. The blue light of the datapads cast her focused frown into oddly malevolent shadows; Luke hurried to keep up.

"This is our main method of organisation. . ."

* * *

No sooner had Leia woken, tapped Luke's mind to find he was already at the Archives, then rolled out of bed, than she received a message ordering her to report to the Emperor immediately.

When she reread the message on her datapad, she frowned. She had a bad feeling about this.

She was the only one in the apartment, her father probably dealing with some navy dispute, so she left a note saying where she'd gone and left, that bad feeling only growing heavier.

By the time she was kneeling in front of Palpatine, it was like a stone in her gut.

She'd been kneeling for a good minute, her head down, the picture of obedience. Usually she was allowed to get up by this point, but she bit down on her irritation. Her father was plotting a coup; Luke was in the Archives. Now was not the time to aggravate him.

"I have a mission for you, my child," he began. "Do you think you are ready for it?"

Leia frowned. "Yes, Master—I have been on missions before—"

"With your brother. This one, you will be undertaking alone."

All the breath fled her lungs.

She knew that one day they would go on separate missions. She knew that they couldn't stay within the same planet of each other forever.

But she hadn't thought that day would be today.

_Especially _not when everything relied on them being together, their entire _family_ being together, in order for this coup to work. They hadn't set a date for it yet, hadn't _discussed_ it yet, but Palpatine sending her away immediately after they'd decided to go ahead with it seemed. . . unfortunate.

Suspiciously unfortunate.

But what could she do? Refuse?

Luke had as good as refused to kill that Rebel, and look where it got him.

"Very well, Master," she forced out through a breathless chest, glad for once that her eyes were cast to the ground. "What is my mission?"

There was a pregnant pause. She shifted where she knelt, that stone in her stomach growing heavier and heavier—

"I want you to find me Amidala."

Her eyes blew wide. Her head shot up, then she realised her mistake when her gaze clashed with cold eyes. She averted it immediately, but the objection still sprung to her lips. "Master, Amidala—"

"Has evaded us for too long. She must be found."

There was something amused in the darkness that swamped the room. She didn't know what to make of it, but whatever it was, she knew this: Palpatine found the idea of _her_ going on this mission vastly entertaining.

She dispelled it from her mind. She could seethe about it later.

"Master," she said carefully instead, "we have search parties scouring the galaxy for the Rebellion, squadrons of Star Destroyers, massive bounties—"

"And yet she has not been found." A slight smile. "I would think the future Empress should know where her greatest enemy lies."

_I do_, she thought. _He's right in front of me._

But she didn't say that. She chose to point out, "We have no idea who she is. She might not be female—she might not be _human_—"

"She took the late Senator of Naboo's name and exploited her legacy to gain support for her insurrection," Palpatine snapped. "Yet many of the captured Rebels have admitted to genuinely believing it's her. They're misguided and foolish, but I doubt they would be convinced by someone who didn't _look_ like her."

She couldn't argue with that, even if something. . . felt off. She just swallowed. "Very well, Master. Where should I start?"

"That's up to you, my dear. You choose where to go, which Imperial resources to commandeer, but you do not return unnecessarily to Coruscant until you have found her, or I give you permission to do so. I want this woman found, and I want her found _quickly_. Which is why I'm putting my best agent on the case." He smiled fondly at her.

She swallowed her objection—_it would go so much _more_ quickly if I had Luke to support me_—but she knew was he was doing.

Divide and conquer.

Luke and her were closer than anything—closer than he considered _safe_. He needed to break that bond somehow, and forcing them onto opposite ends of the galaxy seemed like a good way to start.

It didn't matter.

Whether she was with him or hadn't seen him in years, Leia would tear down the stars for her brother. And she knew he'd do the same.

So she asked, "When do I leave?" and couldn't bring herself to worry in excess about it all.

Palpatine gaze burned through her. She stood there unflinching.

He smiled as he said, "Tomorrow."

* * *

Luke was bored out of his mind, but at least he was starting to get the hang of this filing business.

The Archives were constantly quiet, for all that he could feel the myriad of people around him in the Force. It was a rule to be observed, and Horada stalked round the rows ensuring it was observed well.

No one particularly wanted to cross her. Luke would have scoffed and sneered at them, but he was cowed as well—and not just by her withering looks.

He couldn't touch her. He couldn't mess up this assignment, or the Emperor would find something worse, infinitely worse, for him to do. This task was supposed to teach him obedience. He supposed it _was_ doing so, in a way.

But mainly, it was teaching him how to pick his battles.

It was not worth it to take his frustration out on any of the other volunteers. His lack of self-control would only put him in more trouble than before—and wasn't he in this situation because he'd lost control in the first place?

The blue light had started to ache against his eyes after the first hour or so; three hours away that, he was squinting just to read the monitor. _A Short History of Coruscanti Trade Wars_, winked the holobook he was trying to transfer onto the system.

He eyed the amount of work he'd already had to do on it.

Short.

Right.

_That_ was bad enough, left him restless and antsy enough; throw in the copyright disclaimers, complaints, lawsuits and queries he'd had to file right alongside it—why would anyone _care enough_ to plagiarise this—and his head was swimming.

He was so, so sick of legal jargon.

Frustration rolled into him; he clenched his fist, and ignored the slight creaking as one of his datapads started to bend a little around the edges. _Control yourself._

He didn't know what any of this meant! This was Leia's forte!

Wasn't the Empire supposed to have _cut down _on the Republic's bureaucracy? If this was what it was like _now_, he couldn't _examine_ what senators' aides had had to wade through before he was born—the sooner the Imperial Senate was disbanded, the better.

He lifted his hand to rub his temple, grimacing. He stared at the console, but he couldn't make out the Aurebesh text right in front of him. It seemed to imprinted itself on the back on his retinas, but he _didn't know what it was saying_—

"Boo."

He let out a short scream.

There was an instant _shhh_ from Horada's desk, and several sharp glares from the other volunteers or visitors. He forced himself to calm down as Leia slid into the seat next to him, smirking, and glanced at the console.

"_That's_ what that is?" she observed dryly. "I saw you staring at that thing for ten minutes."

"My eyes hurt, don't be mean," he grumbled back, massaging his head. Four hours in on the first day, and he was already _done_. "I don't know what any of this means."

She skim read it; two seconds later, she told him, "It means the copyright case failed, and the original writer was just cited as an inspiration for the rip-off."

"Fascinating," Luke drawled, but he shoved the document into the right file and pulled up the next one. "So, did you come just to mock my torment, or—"

"I'm going off-world."

He turned to her. "_What_?"

She grimaced, pinching her lips together. "The Emperor," _His _wonderful _Royal Excellency,_ she said into his mind, startling a laugh out of him, "wants me to go search for Amidala. On my own."

"I can see the logic in that," Luke said, and did his best to keep his face straight.

Leia rolled her eyes. "Anyway, I have to leave tomorrow. And I could have told you tonight at the apartment, I suppose, but—"

"You wanted to spend as much time with your darling brother as possible?"

"No," Leia scoffed. _Yes_, she admitted, half to herself. He heard it anyway. "I just figured I should probably do as much research on Amidala as possible before I leave, and considering you so considerately got yourself a job in the main source of Imperial information. . ."

He got the hint. He closed down the document and pulled up the search bar. "What were you going to search for? I think I've got the hang of this whole filing system."

"No doubt it'll soon come crashing down around you then," she quipped. But she leaned forward. "I've already received a particularly thorough dossier on the Rebel figure Amidala, and besides: information about her is classified. I want to do some research on her namesake, that senator from Naboo."

"Padmé Amidala?" He typed it in, and opened the file _Padmé Amidala Naberrie_ that came up. "'Human female, born on Naboo twenty seven years before the foundation of the Empire, served as Queen of Naboo from thirteen to nine BFE, then senator from nine BFE until her death during the Jedi insurrection. She was pregnant by an unknown partner when she died; her baby died with her.'" He frowned at the picture of her at her funeral, white flowers in her hair. She looked. . . familiar. "That seems a little insensitive, using the name of a beloved senator killed by the Jedi to boost support for a terrorist organisation actively aiding Jedi."

"Yeah, but it's not like Rebels are _sensitive_," Leia scoffed, even as Luke copied the file onto a datachip for her. "Though I can see why they thought it'd be a good idea—look how popular she was. Apparently one speech from her could turn the tides of a Senate meeting. If they could convince people she was still alive, drum up support. . ."

"You saw that picture of her dead body, right? I can pull it up again if you want."

"I'm not saying she's alive," Leia snapped, "I'm just saying that convincing people of that fact would help the Rebels a lot. Force, even the idea that she would have supported them over the Empire might hold sway."

"Are you so sure she wouldn't have, though?" While he waited for the files to finish downloading, he flicked open another page. "It says here she was a staunch defender of democracy, and refused to run for another term as queen even when her subjects wanted her to. She was also," he said pointedly, "close friends with Bail Organa."

Neither of them wanted to say it so explicitly in such a public place, but they knew what Bail Organa was like. He wasn't exactly Palpatine's favourite senator.

"She got the Emperor into the position of Supreme Chancellor," she pointed out. _She might well have been in on his plans from the start, spying on Organa, and that's why the Jedi killed her. It's not like it's _unusual_ for politicians to say one thing and mean another_—_all this nonsense about democracy was probably just a cover up for whatever she was doing to serve Palpatine's cause. They're even from the same home planet._

_You're being harsh on her._

_She's a politician._

You're_ a politician._

_Exactly. Don't I always say one thing and mean another?_

"Not to me you don't," Luke said aloud as the data finished downloading and he pulled the chip out of the console. "But I concede the point. Here's the information."

"Thanks." She accepted it, then watched curiously as he opened up another document in the folder. "What's that?"

"Her living and economic conditions once she moved to Coruscant. She was certainly paid well"—_although, if she _was_ working with Palpatine, she didn't see any monetary benefits while she was alive_—"and her apartment looks like it was in really nice area as well." He examined it more closely then, and blanched. "Wait—"

"That's our apartment." Leia leaned forward again to squint at the blueprint that came up, the address printed next to it. "We've been living for the last ten years in Padmé Amidala's apartment."

_No wonder she looks so familiar_, she said over their bond, and Luke relaxed to know that he hadn't imagined the whole thing.

"Interesting." A thought came to him then—terrible, horrible, _painful_.

Padmé Amidala had died pregnant.

"We should ask Father about it later," Leia continued, apparently oblivious to his turmoil. He knew that was false, that she'd sensed it. . . but she was going to wait for him to volunteer the answers, rather than pry. "See if he can give me any answers I won't find in here. He might have known her."

"Maybe." If Luke's theory was true, he had.

But if it was true, Vader would never, ever tell them so. It was too sensitive a topic.

He swallowed, and tried to dispel the thought. "I'm due to go on my lunch break in a few minutes," he said. "Want to get something to eat, before you vanish for several months?"

"I'm not going to _vanish_," Leia said. She didn't correct the timeframe though, and Luke felt a twinge in his gut.

But he ignored it. He had to.

It was the same way he knew he would survive without her: he would, because he had to.


	5. The Family

Luke was already at home when she returned to the apartment that evening. She peered into his room to check on him: he was asleep, his back against the head of the bed, his knees brought up to cradle the datapad lying inert in his lap. His head lolled to the side, and she could sense the bone deep tiredness radiating from him.

Apparently, staring at datapads all day had exhausted him more than even a day of sparring with her could.

She left him to snooze, seating herself in the living room to flick through the files he'd given her on Padmé Amidala instead. Joined politics at age eight due to an urge to help people, tried and failed to improve the situation on Tatooine_, _frequently been a respected anti-war partisan during the Clone Wars—the more she read about her, the more she was sure about one thing:

Amidala _was_ Padmé Amidala.

The morals matched up in general—though admittedly, going from a staunch pacifist with a blaster to an active terrorist was a bit of a leap—and so did the timeline. Amidala had been active for as long as Leia had been alive, almost—not always _explicitly_ so, it had been years before they stopped parading Senator Amidala as a martyr and started parading her as an advocate for their cause, but their intelligence suggested she'd been involved for much longer than most of the galaxy gave her credit for.

If she'd faked her death so she could pursue her rebellion in peace. . .

Briefly, she wondered if the baby she'd been carrying had survived—if it could be used as bait against her. But she dismissed the thought quickly, and pulled up a video of her. The file had it flagged as sensitive information, but with this mission she had the codes to get into anything. She was past the security in a moment.

The blue holo materialised in the air before her. It took her a moment to register where the time, date and setting was, but the moment she did she leaned forward with great interest.

It was the moment the Empire had been founded.

_"The Republic,"_ echoed Palpatine's voice, outside of view of the holocam, _"will be reorganised into the _first Galactic Empire_!"_

Cheering and clapping. Senator Amidala, wearing purple robes and a headpiece that somehow reminded Leia of the Rebel starbird symbol, sat stone-faced. It was the Naboo delegation's senate pod, but Organa, nearly twenty years younger, sat beside her. They exchanged a look.

_"For a safe, and secure, society."_

More cheering and clapping—practically _thunderous_, Leia thought. It just went to show how much better the Empire was than the Republic, if even the hotbed of power-hungry, corrupt senators had rejoiced upon seeing it rise to strip away their bureaucratic powers.

Neither Organa nor Amidala seemed to share her opinion. Amidala shook her head, and there was something tragic in her young face. It hit Leia then: this woman, in this moment, was only ten years older than she was now.

_"So this is how liberty dies,"_ she said. _"With thunderous applause."_

The holo winked out.

Leia stared at the space it had once been, mind whirring. The document's legal jargon on why it had been flagged, stored and had access restricted to it explained that the words triggered some comm monitor, meant to record and contain any anti-war comments or slander. It had been active during the Clone Wars, then doubled, then tripled under the Empire. The Law of Defamation and Slander had made it illegal to even criticise the Imperial regime itself.

As for why it access had been restricted. . .

Well, Amidala had been _extremely_ popular. If this recording got out. . . they already had enough of a loyalty problem with Naboo as it was. Fear kept the inhabitants in line—and only fear.

They felt no affection for their Emperor.

Leia couldn't blame them, but it made things complicated.

There was a light touch on her mind. She glanced up to see Luke stagger out of his bedroom, hair ruffled. "Hey, sleepyhead."

"You still doing research on Amidala?" he asked her, dragging a hand across his face. He perched on the arm of the chair opposite to her and something in his demeanour sharpened, shaking off the dull edge of sleep. The boy fled; the Imperial agent returned.

Both were her brother.

She opened the recording back up and played it, watching Luke's eyebrows climb higher and higher on his head.

"Bold words."

"Censorship wasn't as bad back then."

"I figured," he said, then added, "although she _did_ die shortly after, didn't she?"

Leia closed down the file and sat back, crossing one leg over the other. "Yeah, I have a theory about that." Her gaze flicked up to meet his eye. "And if I remember correctly, you did too."

"You know me so well," Luke drawled, then he processed what she'd actually said and froze.

She could see his mind ticking, wondering what her theory could be. . . and then she saw his eyes widen as it hit him.

He said, "You think she's still alive."

Leia dipped her head. "I do. The character and traits match up with our _beloved_ terrorist leader." She watched her brother for a moment, then said, "You think she's our mother."

He gave something that was half-grin, half-grimace. "We're staying in her apartment, she was with child before she died, and have you _seen_ her picture? You two look more alike than we do."

"If she's our mother, then who was Father?" Leia scoffed. "The only man the file records her being particularly close with was _Bail Organa_. She was supposedly a friend of the Jedi, but—" She broke herself off, the point she didn't want to make turning her skin milk-white.

Luke picked up the dropped thread, and sewed it carefully into: "If she's our mother, _and_ she's alive, then we are the children of a terrorist." He winced, like the words tasted as horrendous as they sounded. "No wonder Father hates the Rebellion so much. If she betrayed him—"

"No," Leia said, shaking her head, _insistent_, "it can't be." _I don't want it to be_, was closer to the truth, but a flaw in most sentient beings is that they often believe what they tell themselves. Leia was no different. "One of us has to be wrong." _I will not be the daughter of a terrorist, a traitor, a_—

"But which one?" He wasn't arguing with her, just trying to make her denial more solid. He was trying to make himself believe it as well. "Was she our mother? Or _is_ she Amidala?"

Leia said something in the tone she and her brother used whenever they knew something was a profoundly stupid idea, but wanted to go ahead with it anyway. "We could ask Father."

Luke stared at her like she was insane.

She pushed on, "We could do it tonight, before I leave."

"Sure, leave _me_ with the apoplectic Sith Lord, why don't you."

"You know you're the best at calming him down. He likes your hero worship."

"I _don't_—"

"I'm sure you'll do fine, Luke." She shot him the sweetest smile she had.

He rolled his eyes. "Fine. We'll ask him."

* * *

There were several dozen ways that _asking him_ could have gone better, Luke thought, but also that it could have gone worse.

When he arrived home, Luke was lounging on one of the sofas with his feet propped up on the table, the datapad he'd fallen asleep reading earlier cradled in his lap again. He felt Vader approach like a black sun on the edge of his consciousness; when he heard the _ding_ of the lift arriving in the apartment he automatically shifted his feet onto the floor, but didn't lift his eyes from the screen.

When Vader strolled in, he barely needed to glance at Luke before he rumbled, not without amusement, "You had your feet on the table, didn't you?"

"You can't prove it." But he was grinning, and he could just _feel_ his father rolling his eyes behind the mask.

Vader went to walk on, no doubt to his hyperbaric chamber to get the closest approximation of sleep he could—he felt _exhausted_ through the Force—but Leia said, "Wait." She shot Luke a meaningful look. "Father, we have something to ask you."

Luke grimaced, and switched off the datapad.

Vader had frozen, tilting his head from son to daughter, mask impassive. Luke admired that about it, for all that he knew his father hated being trapped behind it—it was so much easier to keep one's thoughts a secret by wearing a mask than by controlling one's face.

There was silence for a moment.

"Ask away," Vader drawled.

Leia looked pointedly at Luke. _You're the one who's best at calming him down! You ask him!_

_You're the one who wanted to ask him in the first place!_

Leia swallowed, and said, "Palpatine assigned me to track down Amidala." Vader froze, but before he could react she barrelled on— "I've done some research on her namesake, the late Senator of Naboo, but I was hoping you might know something we couldn't find." _We_—Leia was really throwing him under the speeder alongside her. "Apparently this used to be her apartment, so I—"

Leia stopped talking, and automatically reached for her neck. Not because their father was strangling her, he would never do that to them; Luke could feel it too, a sudden biting cold that permeated the apartment, freezing and crystallising the air around them, even the air inside their throats. It was hard to speak through—it was hard to _breathe_ through.

After a moment, Luke felt shock spasm through the Force. The room rapidly warmed again as Vader got control of himself. Luke took a deep breath, feeling the spikes of ice forming on his tongue melt away.

Vader hadn't moved. He stood silent, staring towards Leia, but not _at_ her. He seemed a thousand parsecs away.

The twins exchanged a glance.

Luke said, carefully, "Father. . .?"

"You will not speak about Senator Amidala again."

He flinched back at the sharp words, delivered in such flat, uncompromising tones. His father was almost never this harsh or cold with them; it was always the Emperor who behaved as such. . .

"But," Leia shook her head, "_Father_—"

"Palpatine has informed me of your mission to hunt down the terrorist leader who stole her name. I do not approve, I do not like it, and I suspect he knows of our plans and is trying to keep us apart by any means necessary. Nevertheless," he growled the word, "I want you to do well. I want you to succeed. So I will tell you this: Padmé Amidala Naberrie is _dead_. She betrayed me and my Empire shortly before you were born, and I killed her for it. All the Naboo who cling to her memory are clinging to ashes and dust. There is _nothing_ to be found but pain by looking into her, so I suggest you stay away, my daughter."

He paused, then added, almost gently, "I don't want you to get hurt."

Luke wondered why he got the overwhelming impression that those words meant _I don't want to accidentally hurt you._

"Padmé Amidala is dead. Rebel terrorist Amidala is a different threat entirely, and you would do well you focus your efforts on them. Is that clear?"

A muscle twitched in Leia's jaw, but she nodded. "Yes, Father."

He stepped forward and touched her cheek lightly. "Good. I am proud of you, you know?"

Leia couldn't quite hide her smile as she ducked her head. "I know."

"And Luke?" Vader turned, his hand dropping back to his side. "I want to talk about what happened in the throne room yesterday."

Luke didn't want to talk about what had happened. He wanted to punch a wall, or the Velts, or himself. He wanted to sink into the sofa and live as a hermit for the rest of his life. He wanted to let go of all this tension inside him in one fell swoop, shattering every glass item on Coruscant with the force of his fury.

He wanted to go to bed. Hide under the covers like a child, and pretend that the world stopped existing when he closed his eyes.

He'd already spent eight hours in the Archives brooding over his failure. He didn't need his father rubbing it in.

But Vader's tone was soft, his Force sense far from angry, so he swallowed. He wanted his father's approval. The idea that he might have failed him, or disappointed him, was tearing him to shreds.

His hands clenched around the datapad; he stared down at it as Vader crouched in front of him. He couldn't see his father's gaze through the mask, but he could feel it roving over his face.

He flinched as a gloved hand came up to wipe something wet off his face. He hadn't realised he was crying.

As if sensing just how ready he was to die from embarrassment and self-loathing, Leia left the room. She knew when to tease, and when to give him space.

"Luke," Vader whispered, "I am not ashamed of you."

His head snapped up. "You—" he choked on the words. "You're not?"

"I'm not." Vader reached for his hand, and gently prised it off the datapad, placing it aside. Then he squeezed it, and didn't let go. "I'm incredibly, incredibly _proud_ of you. You and your sister are greater people than I could have ever dreamed you'd be, and I wouldn't change anything about you for the galaxy. You are my son."

Luke's vision was blurring. He blinked and fresh, hot tears spilled down his cheeks. "But I failed."

"You hesitated. They are not the same thing. And I don't know _why_ you hesitated, but I'm sure it is because you are, at your heart, a deeply compassionate person. Your mother was the same."

Luke jerked his head up at that, aware his longing was splayed plainly across his face for anyone, even his father, to read. Vader gave the smallest shake of his head.

_Another time_, he promised, with something that sounded like heartache.

Luke deflated. He wanted to know anything, _anything_, about his mother—_especially now you think she might be Padmé Amidala_—but he knew that the worst thing to do would be to push.

"You are a deeply empathetic person, and that is why you're so good at what you do. You don't need to read someone's mind to understand them—you read their hearts, and make their own emotions work against them." He squeezed his hand again. "But you must make sure _your_ emotions don't work against _you_."

Luke bowed his head.

"You control them, use them to access the dark side. _They cannot control you_."

Luke knew that was an ongoing battle for Vader, whose incandescent rage had crushed many an officer's ambitions—and trachea. But as a father, he'd fought hard to beat them under control whenever he was around Luke and Leia, swearing on every star in the sky that he would not hurt them. Never.

That fight just made him love his father more.

"The Velt twins," he admitted, "they—"

"They are not you and Leia." Vader picked up on his thoughts immediately. "They were Rebels, traitors, and they risked their own lives and each other when they chose that path. You and Leia will never find yourselves in that situation, because _you are not traitors_."

"But— your plans—"

Luke could feel Vader's grimace as keenly as if it had been his own. "To whom do you owe your loyalty? Whom have you sworn it to? Palpatine—or the Empire, and the galaxy it protects?"

Luke lowered his eyes. "The galaxy."

"Then you are no traitor." Vader brushed another tear away, then cupped his cheek in one massive hand. "Palpatine has to go. You are no traitor for recognising that—you are a patriot, and a protector. _You are no traitor_."

His glove fell from Luke's cheek.

"And I know you never will be."


	6. The Name of the Game

**A quick note: This fic is set loosely before/around the start of season 3 of Rebels. In terms of time and the ages of the characters, this might be ever-so-slightly off, and this fic will not conform to canon continuity 100%, but I will do my best to stick as close to it as possible. (I will also do my best to make it so you don't have to have seen Rebels to understand what's going on.)**

**Since the Inquisitors weren't seen in Rebels after season 2, and (as far as I'm aware) there's no explanation for that in canon, I made one up. Whether or not the Inquisitors _were_ disbanded and/or executed in canon is currently a matter of opinion, but that is the explanation I use in this fic, because it's the one that adds to the story the most.**

* * *

Leia left the next morning, before eight to make sure Luke could be there to send her off. He had to dash to the Archives immediately after her ship left atmosphere, but he hugged her tightly before they both left.

"Good luck," he said into her ear. She could hear the sudden break in his voice, feel it in the way he hugged her tighter. "I'll miss you so much."

They had never been on separate planets before.

The knowledge that they were about to be punched her in the gut. She squeezed him back just as tightly, burying her face in his shoulder so that no one saw her cry. "I'll miss you too. And I'll comm you as often as I'm able to."

"I'll answer every time," Luke promised, "even if Horada murders me for it."

She snorted, then stepped back from him. He smiled at her, but it didn't quite reach his eyes.

_I love you_, he said into her mind.

_I love you too._

She gave him one last attempt at a smile, then forced herself to turn her back on him and walk up to her father.

After a moment's hesitation, she hugged him too. The hard planes and angles of the suit dug into her, but his head came to cup the back of her head and she relaxed.

A sound spat out of his vocoder that was half-laugh, half-sigh, then he rested his hand on her shoulder and looked down at her.

"I'm sure you will do well," he said, "and remember what I said. We will talk about it in more detail once you return."

Leia swallowed, wondering about the wisdom of saying that here, on a landing platform the Emperor was no doubt watching, but she didn't want to draw attention to it.

So she bowed slightly, accompanied by a perfunctory, "Yes, Father," then started up the ramp of the ship.

It was an old smuggler's ship, one which had been named the _Hidden Star_ when she'd bought it for this mission and she hadn't seen fit to change it. Its controls were decent, it handled quickly, flew faster than someone could expect for its size and make—and it had shields to make a Star Destroyer envious.

But most of all: it was nondescript. She could disappear in this ship, go anywhere in the galaxy and no one would ever find her again.

She glanced out the viewport while she strapped herself into the cockpit. Well, no one could find her but Luke.

She doubted she could ever fully manage to hide from him—if only because she wouldn't be able to bear it.

She shook the thought away.

Taking hold of the controls, she breathed in deeply then punched the sequence to start up. Within a minute everything was whirring contentedly, ready to touch off the ground and fly into the starlit sky. She glanced out of the viewport to lock eyes with her family once more—Luke gave a small wave, while Vader stood stoic—then took off, Coruscant's grey and white surface rapidly falling away beneath her.

She'd broken atmosphere within minutes, Coruscanti security scanning her transponder, spotting the Imperial insignia and falling over to acquiesce. She paused, then stared at the navicomputer.

Her father had told her to stop investigating Padmé Amidala. That there was nothing to be found but treachery and pain. But she had nowhere else to start.

There was a _reason_ Amidala had never been found before.

She grimaced, automatically running a finger along the ruthless bun on the back of her head. She tugged a lock of hair free and twisted it, a nervous habit she'd thought she'd managed to break. Now she found herself revisiting it, and she couldn't say why.

Another moment of hesitation, fingers trembling. . . then she punched in the coordinates for Naboo.

Her gaze lingered on the sparkling planet as the navicomputer calculated them. It felt as conflicted as ever, the chiaroscuro of the light and the dark as familiar to her as her own soul. And her brother's—they were both dark, Palpatine and Vader wouldn't accept anything otherwise, but when Luke smiled she thought she'd go blind.

She tapped against that brilliant light once more, then withdrew and pushed up her mental shields. It didn't help; she could still feel him, always there, always supporting her.

Then the navicomputer finished its calculations, she jumped to hyperspace, the parsecs stretched behind her, and Luke vanished as quickly as the stars did.

She swallowed, fighting the urge to cry. The bond was still there, just dormant and strained. She could still feel him, somewhat, but. . .

_But_. . .

She stared at the swirl of hyperspace.

For the first time in her life, she was alone.

* * *

Luke's head was starting to hurt again. He automatically reached for Leia to grumble—she would tell him to get a grip, as she always did, but as always it would have felt good to vent—only for her distant sense in the Force to abruptly bring him back to reality.

His mood soured, and he slammed the datapads he'd been carrying down on the table with perhaps more force than necessary. He felt several people around him bristle through the Force, but they didn't dare to object. Out of favour or not, he was still Lord Vader's son, and the Emperor's personal agent.

Good. He didn't want to deal with anyone right now.

He switched on the first datapad, and grimaced when he read the title of the file. He glanced around. He was allowed to take his lunch breaks whenever, right? Maybe he could leave this for now, then come back later—

A touch of cold glee through the Force, and he stiffened.

No. No, no, oh _Force_ no. He was still touchy from Leia's departure and his conversation with his father from last night; he _really_ didn't want to talk to her on top of that—

It didn't matter. The Sixth Sister strode through the doors and zeroed in on him anyway.

She smirked. Luke scowled.

Horada was already on her feet, snapping at the Sixth Sister to dispense of her lightsaber. Luke had no doubt it would be almost satisfying seeing her have the same argument he'd had the previous day, but he couldn't hear it from here. He had to make do with imagining it.

She approached a few minutes later, sans lightsaber, and crossed her arms over her chest. "Look at you," she commented, her visor sliding open, "working a desk job. Can't say I ever imagined you _here_. But I _guess_, after that _abysmal_ performance in the throne room. . ."

His ire rose, choking him. He forced it back down again.

Horada would _kill him_ if he tore up the room.

His pride, anger, _hatred_ made a storm in his chest.

"Not going to reply? You got nothing to say for yourself?"

"On the contrary," he bit back, smoothly, _quietly_. The Sixth Sister kept drawing annoyed glances for her loud tone; he couldn't afford to be seen on the same level as her, or he'd never get out of here.

The Emperor had sent him here to learn obedience. Even if he spent his waking hours faking and faking and faking it, that started with keeping himself subdued.

It started with keeping himself _controlled._

What had his father said?

_You control your emotions, use them to access the dark side. They cannot control you._

"I," he continued, "am focusing. Our Emperor has given me a job, and I intend to complete it." He lifted his chin to look her straight in the eye. A single curl of red hair had escaped from under the helmet; he watched her eye twitch as it tickled. That slight imperfection was what gave him the courage to purr— "Unlike you and your brethren, who seem incapable of hunting the Rebels as ordered."

She flinched back at that, a snarl rising to her lips. That sort of quiet venom was odd coming from him, he knew; usually, that was his father's job.

His idolised father. The executioner.

More of his words from the previous night came to mind. _I wouldn't change anything about you for the galaxy._

How could his father be the monster so many people feared?

He knew how—he knew _exactly_ how. He admired him for it, planned to follow in his footsteps.

He supposed the question was: How could his father be _evil_?

"We are doing as well as can be expected in hunting them," the Sixth Sister spat. "_Your father_ did nothing but alienate the military and Lothal's administration against us, no doubt in an attempt at sabotage—"

"Actually, I think that's just what he does." Was that where the _executioner_ accusations came from? The people in question had failed in their duty to protect the Empire; the punishments Vader doled out were nothing but just—

The way _Luke's_ punishment had been?

_This is not justice_, Leia had said.

He remembered too what the Emperor had said: _Mercy fosters loyalty._

Those punished deserved what they got. His father was sure about that, so Luke was as well. Did that mean _he_ deserved what he got? Did _Leia_?

It didn't matter, Luke realised. It didn't matter, because he wanted to kill the Emperor anyway.

_This is not justice._

"Exactly!" the Sixth Sister snapped. "That's what he _does_, that's what you and your sister do: you make bigger problems trying to solve problems, then leave the rest of us to clear them up!"

"We just foiled a mass uprising on Kuat," Luke reminded her. There was nothing overtly threatening in his voice, but her face hardened nonetheless. "And _you_ are calling _us_ incompetent?"

She opened her mouth, sneer already fixed in place, clearly ready to say _Yes, I _am_, you_—

But she paused.

She closed her mouth.

Because at the end of the day, Luke and Leia had bathed the system in blood in order to do it, but they _had_ done it.

And at the end of the day, she clearly understood that the Inquisitors _never did_.

They _were_ incompetent. But not for lack of skill.

No. They were too fond of self-sabotage.

Lesser than Sith, greater than Jedi. Always reaching higher. And if you had to tear down a colleague to climb to the top. . . undo everything they'd been working on only to have to work on it yourself. . .

Luke was surprised the Sixth Sister had the honesty to admit it to herself.

And he was even more surprised at what happened next.

She pulled up a chair and sat opposite him, tapping her foot. He glared at her, confused and all the more resentful for it.

A muscle feathered in her jaw.

Finally, she said, "You're not assigned to this Rebel cell."

"No," he said. "I've never had the pleasure of interacting with Phoenix Squadron." He was starting to see where she was going with this, and he didn't know what to think.

She tried again, "You're a competent agent." Her face twisted as she said so, like she had a bad taste in her mouth.

He laughed a little, gesturing to where he was seated, the stack of datapads he still had to process. "Clearly. That's why I'm down here, and not doing the Emperor's bidding in a more specialised manner."

The joke missed her entirely. She barked a laugh, but there was no amusement in it. Luke doubted any of the Inquisitors even knew what amusement was.

She fell silent again for several tense seconds, and he took the opportunity to study her.

It was a risky move. Even if he wasn't assigned to this mission, there was no guarantee he wouldn't just take the results and use them to get himself back into the Emperor's favour. He was already considering it.

This was the Imperial Court, after all. Backstabbing was mandatory.

But she surprised him once more when she swallowed her pride—and her misgivings—and asked, "Would you, by _any_ chance, help me with the investigation?" There was only a little derision in her voice.

The question was on his lips before he was even thinking. "What's in it for me?"

She paused, then tried, "You can regain the Emperor's favour."

"If I could regain the Emperor's favour by hunting Rebels I would never have fallen out of it."

"What about by looking past your personal opinions to cooperate with someone," she pressed, "_for the good of the Empire_?"

Luke paused, considering it.

That would certainly exhibit the control and obedience Palpatine wanted. Or rather, not quite _obedience_: more the surrender of himself, his wants and desires, to serve his master's interests. It was a step in the direction Palpatine wanted, albeit a small one.

"It won't work," he lied. "If you tell him and share credit with _me_, it defeats the purpose of proving that you can operate with any level of competency yourself. And you don't need anything else working against you in _that_ area." She stiffened, opening her mouth— "So, _what's in it for me_?"

Palpatine would find out about the cooperation whether she told him or not—he had eyes and ears everywhere. But she didn't have to know that. If he could get something _else_ out of the deal. . .

The Sixth Sister was silent. She knew there was nothing else she could give him.

Then Luke thought: _Mercy fosters loyalty._

If he did it as a favour and demanded she repay him later, she could simply refuse. The Inquisitors had no honour; that was another reason his father despised them. He would get nothing out of it.

But if it seemed like he was doing it as a favour out of the goodness of his heart. . . that might gain sympathy, or some misplaced idea of loyalty. It might gain him and his family an ally as they went ahead.

And if it didn't, then Luke had nothing to lose, anyway.

"Alright," he said. "I'll do it."

Her head jerked up, mouth falling open. "You _will_?" He tried not to smirk at her incredulity. "Why?"

"Out of the goodness of my heart," he drawled. She clearly didn't believe it. Not for a second. But the fact was that he _was_ doing it, without any material gain.

She was smart enough to recognise that.

He leaned forward. "So," he asked, "what is it you want me to do?"

She swallowed, then said, "I heard rumours that the Inquisitorius were to be disbanded, maybe executed, if we don't succeed in this mission before someone else does." She met his gaze steadily. "And I _also_ heard that Governor Pryce is pushing to get Thrawn on the case."

Luke had heard both rumours as well, but he hadn't put them together until now. "And even if your death is your master's will, you want to fight it?"

She bristled at that—and there, again, was the unconditional, unending, almost _slavish_ loyalty he'd spoken to his father about—but he hadn't hit too far off the mark. The Sixth Sister was Palpatine's creature through and through, as his father had spoken to _him_ about. . . but she didn't want to die.

And—

"I know the Inquisitorius are worth our salt," she insisted, gripping the edge of the desk and digging her nails into the wood. "And my master has been wrong before—I'm certain that he's wrong here. If we can show him that, convince him that this is a better road. . ."

Luke said nothing for a moment, letting her trail off herself.

"Alright," he said, "but _what do you want me to do_?"

"Get Thrawn off the case." The response was immediate. "I don't care how. Discredit him, discredit Pryce, discredit Eli kriffing Vanto if you have to, but _keep him off of it_."

"Thrawn's a tactical genius. I'm sure that if he gets involved, it will be over quickly—"

"For us as well as them," she snapped. "You know that. You said you'd help me, Luke"—they both jarred at the unwanted familiarity of her using his given name; _this was what having no last name left him with_—"so _help me_."

They kept eye contact for a few more moments before he broke it.

"I'll try," he said around the lump in his throat. Fallen from grace as he was, he wasn't even sure he could achieve _this_. "I don't know how successful I'll be," he admitted, "but I _will_ try. I promise you that."

A breath hissed out of her. It wasn't quite relief—more a slackening of tension—but it was no doubt the closest she ever got.

"And I'll gather all the information Leia and I collected on Phoenix Squadron as well," he added. It wasn't like they were using it. "I'll get that to you as soon as possible." _Entirely out of the goodness of my heart._

"I thought you said you'd never interacted with that cell."

"It pays to be prepared."

She pinched her lips together, then nodded. "Thank you."

He was taken aback by the earnestness in the words. "Don't thank me yet," he said. He glanced at Horada. "Now, you should probably go, or I'll fall behind and won't _be able_ to help you."

"Alright."

She got to her feet.

For a moment she lingered, looking like she was going to say something else—

Then Luke beat her to it. "Oh, and Sixth Sister?"

She flicked her gaze to his.

"As long as we're doing each other favours," he drew out the words, slowly and clearly, "_don't_ mention what happened in the throne room again."

Her brows creased briefly, then cleared. She smirked as she affected a mock bow—much more cheerful than the one she gave his father—and drawled, "As you wish."

He didn't contain his laugh as she made for the exit. Nor did he bother listening to her haggle for the return of her lightsaber, and instead reached for the next datapad. Then he paused.

He glanced up just as the door slid shut behind her.

He was in the Imperial Archives. They'd had detailed information on Senator Amidala; he had no doubt they would have detailed information on Thrawn and Governor Pryce when he looked.

He had to wonder. . .

Sure enough, there was a file on the Inquisitorius. He opened it, then opened the folder about the individual Inquisitors. He skim-read the document about the Grand Inquisitor, dead over a year by now. Funny, he mused, the Pau'an's failure to deal with these Rebel Jedi and subsequent death might well have been the beginning of the end for his organisation.

He made to close the whole thing, when one file caught his attention.

_Acquisitions._

He paused.

_I would have found you all the sooner_, his father had said.

Against his better judgement, perhaps, he clicked open the page.

It was a list. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, long. Names, dates, designations. _The First Sister, the Second Sister, the First Brother, the Third Sister, the Second Brother. . . _

His eyes skipped down the list. These were the Inquisitors. The dates of _original_ _acquisition_, the home planets the infants had been acquired from—and the names their blood relatives had given them.

The world slowed.

Every one of them had had a name, he realised. _Every single child_ had had a name, a family to love it enough to give it one. And the Empire he so loved had. . . stolen that away, to be replaced by a number. Palpatine had stolen it away.

_His father_ had stolen it away?

_I would have found you all the sooner._

Had— had he found Luke and Leia like this, as well? When their mother—because Padmé Amidala _had_ to have been their mother, he was _convinced of it_—had 'betrayed him', had she run off with them, as well?

Had Luke had a name when Vader found him?

Had his father stolen it from _him_ as well?

He didn't know what to think anymore.

His eyes blurred, then cleared again when he blinked. The names on the screen danced back into focus, and he found himself fixating on the first line that jumped out at him.

The designation read the _Sixth Sister_.

And the name next to it read, _Mara Jade_.


	7. First Shadow

Naboo was not called the jewel of the Mid Rim for nothing.

Leia glanced around as she exited the docking port. Theed's classic domed buildings arching above her. She'd changed out of her Imperial-style clothes—not a _uniform_, per se, but too close to one nevertheless—into something more nondescript.

Well, she thought, not quite frowning down at the ruffled aquamarine top she was wearing. Nondescript on _Naboo_. She still looked well-dressed enough to invite attack in a lot of areas of Coruscant—and any number of other planets—but she supposed that if she had to blend in. . .

And it wasn't as though she _disliked_ it.

So she set off, slinging a small bag over her shoulder and hiding her lightsaber inside. Having it out in the open would just be _inviting_ questions, she knew—but that didn't mean she had to _like_ not having it immediately on hand.

She had to stick a tiny—_laughably_ tiny—blaster in there as well, and her comlink, and her identification chips, and her datapad—

She sighed.

She was going to need a bigger bag.

Finally, though, she did manage to squeeze everything she needed into one _History Students of Theed _rucksack she bought. She slung it over her back and set off.

The first place she was planning on visiting was obvious. Padmé Amidala's tomb and accompanying gardens were a public attraction that anyone could visit, except on specific days and when her relatives requested they had private access to her memorial. Leia didn't even have to pull Imperial rank to get herself in.

Once she _was_ in, she looked around. The gardens were surrounded by a high wall, decked with a climbing plant whose scarlet blossoms she distantly recognised, but she couldn't have said more than that. The small pavilion over the entrance was an elegant thing: all pale blue stone and flowing lines. She glanced at the mosaic under her feet briefly—an image of the senator's face, still in death and frozen in art, white flowers adorning her hair—then up when there was a prickle at the back of her neck.

For a moment, she froze at what she saw.

Then the moment passed, and logic kicked in. That painting was not Palpatine.

It was a life-sized painting of him, certainly. An oil painting—_seriously?_ What an indulgence—of him standing in a Chancellor's garb, a loving hand resting on Senator Amidala's shoulder. She too was dressed in the formal clothes her work required, and they both looked happy, contented, smiling at the painting with all the satisfaction of people in power.

But in all of Leia's research, she'd never come across any mention of Senator Amidala posing for an oil painting.

"It was painted after her death," a voice behind her said, warm and friendly. "The artist's impression of what her future in the Empire might have been."

Before she'd even turned around, Leia knew the woman was a politician, a staunch supporter of democracy, and a personal friend of Padmé Amidala.

Her voice was flat and controlled while her Force sense exploded in distaste: politician. Or some sort of civil servant. Or bodyguard.

The distaste in question for Palpatine in particular and the Empire at large, plus the Naboo accent: a staunch supporter of democracy.

And a personal friend of Padmé Amidala: just how _strong_ her distaste was. Either she'd been a fanatic—which was admittedly not that far-fetched, she'd had her fair share of supporters—or she'd been her friend.

She turned to see a brown-haired woman standing behind her, dressed in clothes that blended in with Naboo's. Something about her face, her accent, the way she tilted her head, reminded Leia of the woman in the painting in a way that went beyond the simple fact that they looked similar.

She smiled at her when she met her eye, and something in her made her smile back. She was wary though—and not just because in the Force, this person was walled off as thoroughly as this garden was.

"It was commissioned for the last curator of these gardens," she continued, nodding to the portrait again, "but he didn't feel it was fitting to the tone of the place. He thought the portrait already up, of Amidala as queen, was more suitable. He died a few weeks ago."

Leia blinked at the sudden change of topic, the weight in the tone the woman said it in. Then the pieces fell into place.

A man had died because he refused to show a portrait of the Emperor in his building.

Leia was familiar with the tactic. It wasn't _law_ to always pay lip service to the Empire at the very _least_, but one might find themselves. . . disadvantaged. . . if they didn't.

She didn't know how to feel about that.

She'd been fine with it for years. A few weeks ago, she would have scoffed and said _good riddance_. But some of Luke's nightmares and fears had started bleeding over into her mind now.

She could no longer separate _traitor_ from _family_.

And she had to wonder how that family of the dead man felt.

"Well, you didn't come to hear depressing things like that." The woman smiled at her, so Leia bit back her snarky response of _I came to visit a tomb_—she got the hint that wasn't what she was trying to say. "Would you like me to show you around?" She glanced at the emblem emblazoned onto Leia's rucksack. "If you're doing research on her, I knew Senator Amidala personally. I can tell you things you won't find in history books." A pause, then a calculated— "For example, you look a lot like her."

Luke had said that. Leia still didn't like the idea of looking like a traitor.

_Traitor and family. . ._

But she smiled prettily—she'd certainly need the information being offered—and said, "I'd love that. It'd be extremely useful."

When they stepped out from the pavilion into the sunshine, Leia was instantly assaulted by the smell of hundreds of different types of flower.

"My name is Tsabin," the woman said as they began to wander the gardens. "I was one of Padmé's handmaidens, when she ruled as queen, and I helped her as senator for a while as well. And you?"

Leia swallowed. She didn't have the time to come up with an alias on the fly, so she just said, "Leia," and hoped this woman wasn't a Rebel who might recognise the name.

There was no flicker of recognition from his mind—but then again, with shields like those, here was barely a flicker of _anything_. It didn't put Leia's mind at ease.

The woman's distaste for Palpatine must be _strong_ if it had leaked through _that_.

"Are you on exchange from Coruscant?" Tsabin asked. "Your accent certainly isn't from Naboo."

"Yes." She didn't want to add any more to a lie she hadn't meticulously planned out, so she pretended to be very absorbed in studying a brightly-coloured flower instead.

"That's a nova lily," Tsabin added helpfully. "Padmé actually helped design these gardens during her second term as queen, and the gardeners do their best to keep it in line with how she wanted it." She paused. Leia waited for her to make conversation—it might mean she accidentally let something important slip.

She didn't know what _important_ would be, but she already had an impossible job to fulfil. She might as well do it to the best of her ability.

Finally, Tsabin asked, "Are you enjoying living on Naboo?"

Leia let her hand drop from the flower blossom. "Yes," she lied lightly, then added—because the best lies had pieces of truth in them—"I miss my family, though. My brother in particular."

"Ah, I understand. I don't have any siblings, but the other handmaidens were like sisters to me, and it was sad when we parted ways." Again, Leia didn't say anything as they turned another bend and ducked underneath a trellis of pink buds, some of them opened towards the sun.

Tsabin shot her a look. "What was the topic of your paper again? It _was_ Padmé, correct?"

Leia nodded quickly—she'd never _said_ that, but she had no problems lying. "I'm interested in how her personal ideology and policies affected her popularity."

"Well!" Tsabin said, her face lighting up as she went for the bag slung over her shoulder. "If it's her personal ideology you're looking for, you won't find much about it near her tomb—it's just about her personal life and relationships, not her politics. But I have some datachips here," she plucked three out of the bag and waved them in her hand, "with recordings of her speeches, transcripts of letters she wrote to and received from other senators or politicians, drafts of bills, as well as articles and essays she wrote in her own free time."

Leia's eyes blew wide as the woman held them out, palm up. This— it couldn't be this easy, could it? Something was wrong here.

Especially with how closed off Tsabin felt through the Force.

"I've been trying to get them published for a while now, but nowhere wants to take them. They say Amidala's of a _bygone age_." Leia had to laugh at the irony of that—if the theory she was trying to prove was correct, then Padmé Amidala was anything but _bygone_. "Feel free to take them. Maybe if you do well in your essay more people will be interested in what they have to say."

Leia waited for more, more ultimatums, more conditions, but there were none. The woman just held the datachips out, an earnest look on her face.

If Leia didn't have the Force, she might have believed it. But Tsabin's Force sense was anything but earnest.

Yet she needed that information.

Refusing it would only make this impossible task more impossible.

So she clasped her hands round the chips and dropped them into her bag. Quickly, as if they might be coated in poison.

"Thank you," she said. "It's convenient for me that you had them on you."

"It is, isn't it?" Tsabin smiled. There was something sharp about the expression, and Leia was just about to press further when the woman's comlink buzzed.

She glanced down and grimaced. "I have to go," she said. Her voice was slightly apologetic—but it was also oddly _gleeful_. "I hope you make good use of them."

"I will," Leia said. She narrowed her eyes at Tsabin's back as the woman jogged off, quickly disappearing into the flowers.

Her hand tightened on the strap of her rucksack, then she set off for the tomb itself.

Tsabin had been right—there wasn't much of any worth around the tomb or on the information panels beside it. And Leia just felt _cold_ standing there. It was like a recurring nightmare she remembered in half-snatches from when she was little, of two babies crying and a woman dying.

Padmé Amidala had been pregnant when she died.

And she _knew_ Luke had already convinced himself that—

She shook the thought away, but a spidery sense of dread lingered, skittering up and down her back.

She fled the tomb quickly enough, seeking refuge in the gardens outside—places of warmth, light, _life_. But the feeling dogged her for several hours afterwards.

And so did the thought that created it.

* * *

Sabé was sitting in the café opposite the entrance to the gardens when she saw Leia come out, brow creased in thought and confusion. The girl glanced one way and another, then set off without really taking it all in. Sabé watched her go and made a note to make sure wherever, Padmé's daughter was staying, it was safe.

Not everyone cowed before Imperial might on Naboo—least of all Sabé, but she wasn't the threat here. Something was stirring, and she didn't want the girl caught up in it.

She'd already given her enough to think about.

Padmé had wanted her daughter to know her, what she was like, and understand democracy at its heart before their inevitable meeting. After they'd found out Leia was headed to Naboo, she'd asked Sabé to plant the information chips on her to _teach_ her that—everything Palpatine and Vader certainly wouldn't have taught her.

Few had heard about Luke's misconduct in the throne room, but they had. And they could tell the galaxy was changing.

It was like planets beginning to shift out of orbit slowly, then ever faster. It was like the start of an eclipse.

The shadow was just beginning to fall. Soon all they'd have was the corona, and they would see who could survive in the dark.

* * *

Luke tucked the datachip containing everything he'd found into the palm of his hand and set off the moment he was done with his shift.

Horada barely looked up when he retrieved his own lightsaber from the draw she always kept it in. He didn't bother saying goodbye before he darted out and headed up several levels to the landing pad.

He took his speeder along the familiar route into the Works, to where he could sense the Inquisitors' training facility like a gaping wound that bled rage into the Force.

The Inquisitors were, in name, under his father's jurisdiction as much as the Emperor's, so none of them on guard tried to stop him as he halted outside and walked right in. They knew who he was—resented him, envied him, _loathed_ him, but knew him all the same. He could feel their eyes on his back as he strolled in.

The first set of doors hissed open onto an empty antechamber. Luke hesitated briefly.

If there had been anyone around to mock him for doing so, he wouldn't have. But perhaps the problem was that there _wasn't _anyone around.

Leia should be here.

He'd never walked in here alone. He hadn't given it much thought at the time, but he'd always been with his father and Leia—he'd never had _cause_ to come here on his own.

Now it occurred to him that he was walking into a building full of people who wanted him dead, completely alone.

If both he and Leia died in one _accident_, it would look incredibly suspicious. But if Luke died on his own. . .

He was safer with Leia.

And even if he wasn't. . . he missed her. He felt braver when they were together.

He instinctively reached for their bond, but it was still strained, stretched and thinned. There was the barest flicker of a presence there, enough to know that she was alive and unharmed, but otherwise nothing.

_You have to learn to stand alone_, he thought.

And standing against Inquisitors? He could beat them any day.

He took one step, then another, and strode into the complex.

As rarely as he _did_ come here, he knew the layout well. It was a straight shot forward to the sparring room, and he could hear the hum and clash of lightsabers even from here. No practice blades: Inquisitors won or Inquisitors suffered.

Sometimes—a lot of the time—it was both.

The door directly ahead of him hissed open, and he came to stand in the small gallery that overlooked the room. The red guards assigned to stand and watch along that same gallery barely tilted their heads at his appearance. They stood stock still, the light from the windows they stood beside casting eerie contours over their masks as well as illuminating the dust motes in the air, the training ring below.

Six Inquisitors spun their sabers, watching their opponent with the sort of razor distrust only they and the Emperor could ever practice. Three individual duels, each as fierce and brutal as the last; Luke hardly knew where to look.

The duellers hadn't noticed his presence yet, but the other Inquisitors, milling around the edges awaiting their turn, certainly had. The Sixth Sister—_Mara Jade_—was down there, her mask closed off to any expression she might show. But she tilted her head upwards toward the gallery, and he knew she'd seen him.

She tilted her head slightly. There was a clumsy attempt at contact with his mind, but he waved it off before she could say anything.

_I have the information for you,_ he replied curtly. He saw no physical reaction from her—his eyes were, ostensibly, fixed on the fights—but he felt her grudging acceptance before she withdrew. He'd fulfilled this part of his promise: he was giving her _this_ much.

Now all they needed was a way to give it to her without the other Inquisitors noticing.

Loyalty and cooperation was a shifting thing between servants of the Empire, as was perception. It was always best to cultivate your reputation, and that included who you dealt with.

So he watched, doing his best to keep a mask of careful amusement on his face, as the three duels below ended. All in all, not too brutal—someone looked like they were limping, another person was lying limp on the floor, but at least no one had lost an eye this time.

Supposedly, when his father had first started teaching the Inquisitors, he'd hacked a limb off of each of them to teach them the meaning of pain and loss. That, Luke knew, was the first step onto the path of darkness, and the first fostering of a resentment in the servant that could be twisted to serve the master.

They had served loyally ever since.

More of them were beginning to notice him now, watching them from the dais, and he felt the general anger and resentment in the room simmer ever higher.

Before another duel could begin, Jade opened her mask and snapped at him, "Come to prove why you're above us?"

The hatred spiked again—and further, as he let himself smile.

That was one way to cover up what was going on.

"I don't have anything," he told her, "to prove to _you_."

She stalled. She hadn't expected him to make it that much more difficult for her. But Luke would rarely lower himself to fight the Inquisitors before, and as far as any of them knew, nothing had changed.

As far as _he acknowledged himself_, nothing had changed.

"Then do it for the good of the Empire," she challenged further. The general chatter in the room had fallen silent, even the red guards turning their heads to observe the exchange. "Teach your _underlings_ exactly what we should strive to be."

They had everyone's full attention now.

Not the way Luke would have gone about being _subtle_, but he'd go along.

He inclined his head mockingly. "If you insist," he said, then vaulted off the gallery to land on the same level as them, gently, the Force billowing around him.

He, very carefully, unhooked his lightsaber from his belt and held it at his side, loose in his grip. "Would you like to be my partner?"

She grinned at him, and inclined her head just as mockingly. "It'd be my honour," she said, "_my lord_."

Perhaps it made him the most dramatic person in the Core, but he was thoroughly enjoying all these theatrics.

He flicked his wrist twice—firstly to shift the datachip out of a pocket in his sleeve, secondly to light the saber. Then, before she was ready, he lunged.

Panic flashed across her face briefly before she got her blade up in time to block it, gritting her teeth against the effort. Their eyes met over the crossed blades; Luke shifted his grip so their hilts were right next to each other, the emitter on his lightsaber near skimming the metal ring on hers.

It was only a moment of lost concentration that he took to pull on the dark side, and it was worth it. The cold plunged everything into crystal clarity, slower, more precise. He could feel his own heartbeat, see her press her lips together in resolve, feel the emotions of the people around him.

Amusement, from the guards. Glee, anticipation, _bloodlust_ from the Inquisitors.

But most of all, he noticed the minute flicker of understanding that crossed Jade's face when he floated the datachip out of his sleeve and into hers.

The moment it was there he lashed out with his leg, but she dodged the kick and the following slash, ducking back. Her yellow eyes narrowed: this was no longer theatrics, played out to achieve a goal. That goal had already been achieved.

This was a duel, now.

If she lost to Darth Vader's son, she'd bear the brunt of all the other Inquisitors' wrath. They could be violent in their disappointment.

If Luke lost to the Sixth Sister, his father would be disappointed with him.

He cared about one of those things substantially more than the other.

So he _focused_.

All Inquisitors had a similar fighting style, and he always struggled to understand how his father had been the one the teach it to them. Vader relied on _power_. He never wasted time with flashy moves designed to distract or intimidate; he didn't need to. He'd taught that style of fighting to his children.

So Luke held himself still, eyes narrowed, lightsaber out and in a defensive stance. Ready to—

There. Jade spun her lightsaber, painting a swathe of red on the air, and brought it down lightning fast.

But he wasn't there.

He ducked to the side and stabbed his saber forward. She barely caught it on one of her blades and shoved it away. She spun her saber again—

He stepped aside and kicked her torso.

She toppled back, on her feet again with a grunt and a snarl. Her eyes narrowed; her mask hissed close.

_That's not your tell, Jade._

But she was still off-balance: he advanced forward, forced her to parry, parry, parry, always on the defensive.

She tried to spin her saber but he wrapped the Force round her right wrist, held out from her body, and fixed it in place. She jerked, tried to get free in time to avoid the slash he aimed at her torso and _just_ stepped back in time to avoid being skewered.

He let go of her wrist and threw her into the wall.

She collided with a thud, crumpled to the floor. Her mask opened again just long enough for her to shoot him a look loaded with such venom something inside him withered and died.

He turned off his lightsaber.

"Your main tell is that you keep spinning your saber," he told her. It was useful advice, but he supposed hearing it in front of all the other Inquisitors made it humiliating, demeaning. "Just because you _can_, doesn't mean you should use it exclusively. It leaves you open to attack."

She kept glaring at him.

"Learn something from the Grand Inquisitor: he always used one blade unless two was necessary."

She shoved herself to her feet.

"The Grand Inquisitor," she spat, "was bested by a half-trained _Padawan_ who calls himself _Knight_. I doubt I have anything to learn from _him_."

He shrugged, and turned away. "Then fail."

He took several steps towards the exit, but before he got there the Force screamed a warning. He jerked round, lightsaber igniting just in time to block the strike aimed at his head.

He looked down into Jade's glittering yellow eyes, and something snapped.

He threw out his hand and she was yanked up, her hands scrabbling for her throat, suspended in mid air. She gasped for breath—then cried out when he squeezed tighter.

He let go, and she fell to the floor.

"When you next challenge me to a duel," he said calmly, "make sure it's worthy of my time."

She stared at him, more in shock that anything. He could feel the other Inquisitors staring at him too.

He dropped his fist to his side and clenched it.

That—

He had—

His father would be proud of him, he thought.

So he just turned back around, clipped his lightsaber to his belt, and walked out of there.


	8. One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

Leia unlocked the doors to the docking port and wasted no time in heading for her ship, where she collapsed onto her bunk in the sleeping quarters and buried her face in her hands.

She didn't know if she should look at what was on those datachips.

Did she trust Tsabin? No.

Did she want to look anyway, because curiosity was eating her alive from the inside out? Absolutely.

She spent several hours putting it off, distracting herself with inane tinkering to her ship.

And when she gave in, she spent several hours combing through the datachips.

There was _so much here_. And— and she _loved _it.

Senator Amidala's voice—in writing or in the Senate—sounded as cool and clear as the waterfalls of this very planet, her reason impeccable but not lacking emotion. The orator and trained politician inside her marvelled at her skill—and _logic_—even as she grew more and more afraid.

Because this conflicted with _everything_ she'd ever been taught.

Padmé Amidala was the antithesis to Sheev Palpatine.

Leia opened one of her essays. Tsabin's foreword noted it as a letter written to the leader of a planet that was debating joining the Separatists.

Amidala wrote, _An old friend of mine once said to me that loyalty to the Republic_—_to democracy_—_is paramount. I know that our democracy has failed you in the past, as it failed me when I was forced to take personal action after my home planet was invaded so long ago, and I will not pretend it will not fail us both in the future. It is a system of government invented by fallible sentient beings, after all, and nothing we can create is ever perfect._

_At the time, with this in mind, I challenged my friend to answer what we should do if the democracy we serve does not return the favour. His answer was that we must work to restore the democratic process. Because democracy at its best is, in my humble belief, the only true representation of what is best for the people. And if it is failing in its duty then it is _our_ duty to improve it._

_Many have called me an idealist for thinking such things. But why would I have joined politics at as young an age as I did if I was not an idealist? _

_The majority of Separatist senators have just and noble intentions in mind. I believe that. But just as strongly I believe that the solution to fixing a flawed system is to cooperate and compromise with each other and _improve_ it, not to burn it down simply because it was as flawed as all things are._

_I am not in this position to destroy. I am here to create_—_aren't we all?_

_And I wholeheartedly hope that whatever the Republic creates next, you and your system will be a part of it._

Leia blinked.

She read it again. Then she read Tsabin's afterword.

Apparently the letter was only a draft, and had never been sent—barely five days later, Padmé Amidala had been declared dead and the planet she was writing to had been punished the same way all Separatists and their sympathisers had.

Leia set down the datapad and stared at her fingers, entwined in her lap.

That was hardly the first thing she'd read or watched that had. . . chilled her.

No. Not chilled her.

_Touched_ her.

_I am not in this position to destroy._

This woman who _didn't want to destroy_ was the current leader of the greatest terror threat the Empire had ever seen_. _Yet the words rang genuine to Leia.

So—

_How_—

Had her stance changed so drastically in the last seventeen—nearly eighteen—years?

It wasn't infeasible.

Leia shook her head—and her hands. Her hands were shaking. She clutched them tighter.

How could she. . . relate. . . so much to something such a terrible woman was saying? How did Amidala sound so _passionate_ but also so _logical_? How could she say things like that in this letter—and many other letters, and speeches, and essays, and bills—then turn around and attack Kuat the way she had, sowing discord throughout the galaxy she'd sworn to serve—

Only, that hadn't been her, had it?

Luke had worked it out. Those Rebels—the Velts—had had nothing to do with Amidala. They'd been working with Saw Gerrera.

Leia knew as well as anyone else in the Emperor's inner circle that nearly all of the attacks the Imperial news decried as violent terrorist activity were actually carried out by Gerrera and his Partisans. She knew they were a splinter faction of the larger Rebellion, not necessarily representative of the main whole.

But whenever she'd wondered about it, Palpatine had assured her that the larger Rebellion _was_ planning something larger, more violent; they were just quieter about it. Their massacres were at bases meant to be secret, so secret that the public—and even she—wasn't allowed to know about them. They had no choice but covering them up, and to prevent people from incorrectly believing the Rebellion harmless, they'd used Gerrera's attacks as 'proof'.

It had seemed reasonable.

Yet it was now occurring to Leia that even now, with her clearance almost on the level of a Grand Moff's, lesser only to her father and the Emperor, she had no idea what the Rebellion had actually done.

Attack military instalments? She knew about that.

Send in spies to steal military secrets? She knew about that.

Assassinate her, Luke, her father? She knew _all about that_.

She'd never stopped to realise that all the targets were technically military.

This wasn't terrorism. This was warfare.

Warfare to reinstall a system Amidala had had such faith in. . .

_It is a system of government invented by fallible sentient beings, after all, and nothing we can create is ever perfect._

Palpatine's tales of a Republic corrupt from the bottom up, of senators who loved money more than righteousness, of a system that nobody believed in. . . they all crumbled before Padmé Amidala's impassioned words.

Amidala had been a pacifist—to an extent. These files were making it clearer and clearer that she'd turned more towards violence after the Invasion of Naboo thirty years ago. Yet she'd still been a staunch opponent of the Clone Wars, and advocated for defence more than attack.

The Rebellion was _built _on unexpected attacks.

Had the formation of the Empire pushed her to abandon all her ideals?

Leia's eyes caught and snagged on one line: _We must work to restore the democratic process._

No. It hadn't.

She hadn't abandoned her ideals. In fact, fighting against a dictatorship—no matter how much more _effective_ it was than the democracy that preceded it—was actively in line with them.

Leia squirmed. She didn't like where this was going.

She didn't like having her views challenged like this, someone to whom she owed no loyalty, no attention, no _trust_, swaying her ideas like they were flags in the wind.

She wanted Luke. He'd help her understand all of this.

She reached for his mind, but there was just that same hollow distance as always.

So she kept reading instead.

Her fundamental truths kept crumbling.

Clearly not everyone had supported the then-Chancellor's unusually long service: Amidala had drafted a call to reinstate term limits.

(Amidala, who had refused to amend Naboo's constitution so she could serve longer as queen, and stepped down. . .)

Clearly not everyone had considered the clones as little more than slaves, as her father had always ranted about: Amidala had drafted several bills advocating for their personhood.

(The Empire had phased the clones out of service once they weren't needed to exterminate Jedi, and left them to rot in their guilt over what they'd done. . .)

And clearly not everyone had been indifferent to the slavery in the Outer Rim, something Leia herself had always scorned them for: here, right in front of her, were drafts of bill after antislavery bill after antislavery bill.

(Palpatine had _quadrupled_ the amount of slavery in the galaxy. . .)

It was several hours later that she finished, head swimming from all the information—and _doubts_—she'd absorbed. She didn't like doubting herself. She didn't like this at all.

She opened one last document and froze.

There, stark against the white screen of the datapad, was a comlink frequency.

The name next to it read, _Sabé_.

Tsabin.

Sabé.

_Padmé_.

Padmé Amidala had had several handmaidens as Queen of Naboo, hadn't she? Not to mention quite a few more as Senator.

And hadn't they all changed their names to reflect hers?

But Leia had already known of Tsabin's involvement with Amidala. That thought was quickly shunted aside when another, more pertinent one came to the forefront:

Wouldn't someone as loyal as a handmaiden support their previous friend and ruler in _anything_?

Even, say, high treason?

Was it beyond the realm of belief to consider that Tsabin—_Sabé_—was a Rebel?

Leia thought back to the way the woman had held herself, the shielding on her mind, her careful, considered manner.

Oh yes—she was _definitely_ a Rebel.

But did that mean. . .

Had— had _Tsabin_ been trying to _recruit_ her?

That was ridiculous. The _thought_ that it would _ever_ succeed was _ridiculous_—

Right?

Leia switched off the datapad and stuffed it into her bag, pointedly not looking at the comlink frequency. No. She wasn't going to comm her. Even if she could get more information—maybe even Amidala's location—out of her.

She needed to _think_ first.

She reached for her comlink anyway, and typed out a message.

More than anything, she needed to talk to Luke.

* * *

Luke's comlink gave a soft _ping_ while he sat at his desk poring over yet another stack of paperwork Horada had dumped on him. There'd been a distinctly evil look in her eye as she did so, and now he had no shame in diving for the message immediately.

Anything for a distraction.

And this Leia sent him was certainly distracting enough. She wanted _more_ information about Padmé Amidala? Not to mention some of the recordings and holos she was sending, one at a time. Speeches and essays and letters, snippets of video from her time as queen and in the senate. He frowned.

_Add them to the file_, her message read. _Can you check through, see if there's something I missed?_

"Anything for my darling sister," he said under his breath, but sighed. Then he reached out a hand to shove the other datapads he was supposed to organise away.

As he did, he _actually_ _looked_ at the headings on a few of them. It was just standard paperwork, but it was his father's name that caught his eye.

_Twelve officers executed for poor conduct and incompetence in the last cycle, sentence carried out by Lord Darth Vader._

His hand unintentionally stilled.

He knew what the pretty words were covering up. His father's standards were brutally harsh, and he was equally brutal in exacting them. It shouldn't have bothered him as much as it did—it wasn't like he hadn't known of it, hadn't _seen it happen_, before. And it _wouldn't_ have bothered him, if it weren't for. . . _that_ word.

_Executed._

And he thought. . .

_I refuse to kneel before a tyrant and his executioner._

He didn't know what he thought. He'd always known about Vader's behaviour—he'd endorsed it. If his father thought it was right, then it must be.

Why was he having doubts now? It wasn't just because of Teela Velt's impassioned words, he knew that much. He'd had hundreds of speeches spat at him by hundreds of Rebels; they had never burrowed quite so deep.

What in the galaxy had happened which caused him to doubt his father so much—and, by extension, himself?

He didn't know.

No. He did know. But he didn't like thinking about it.

But researching Padmé Amidala was hardly going to help, because that was _intrinsically tied up in it_—

He transferred one of the videos Leia had sent him to the computer screen and watched it play out. Amidala stood in Naboo's senate pod, as she had in so many holos of her that they'd dug up. She was giving a speech—something about the Clone Wars, but it wasn't clear from the recording what. Once she was finished she didn't take her seat again; rather, she turned around to head out of it, where a man seemed to be waiting for her.

Luke paused the video.

Something about that man. . . the way he stood. . .

He zoomed in on the image. The figure was tall—much taller than the senator, even with her hairpiece—and wore dark robes, cut in the style of a Jedi Knight. Sure enough, there was a shape that might have passed for a lightsaber in the grainy quality.

Luke squinted and scrutinised the man's face.

It too was blotchy and blocky, with the blue light of the holo disguising his colouring. But the way he stood, angled to block the senator from prying eyes, the way she tilted her head back and half-smiled, half-smirked at him. . .

Something was important.

So Luke scrutinised him further.

Nose. Mouth. Eyes. Eyebrows. . . and there, bisecting the right eyebrow, was a deep scar.

Luke had rarely seen his father without the mask, but he _had_ seen him.

It was odd to see his younger, unburned self here.

He played the holo again, and watched the man's mannerisms just as carefully as he had before. They matched his father's, for sure.

And looking at how the two interacted. . . the features clearly visible in both Luke and Leia. . .

If he hadn't been before, he was even more convinced that Padmé Amidala had been his mother.

And that man was his father.

Who had he been? Who was he?

Who was _Luke_?

He spent the next standard hour searching for any Jedi who matched the profile of the man in that holo, but to no avail. And when he finally walked out of the Archives, his head spinning, he almost didn't notice the woman who walked across the corridor opposite him.

"Ja— Sixth Sister," he corrected, berating himself for the slip. He hadn't told her what he'd found yet and he didn't want to prompt too many questions.

She ignored him, and kept walking.

"Wait!" He jogged after her, and stopped when she did. He wanted to cringe at the withering glare she shot him, before he pulled himself together. What he was about to say made him seem soft enough as it was. "I just— I just wanted to say, I'm sorry for yesterday."

Then was a beat of silence, her shock clear, then—

"Don't be," she snapped back. "I led you into it. And you gave me the information, so we're even."

Funnily enough, that did not sound like forgiveness. "I embarrassed you when I didn't need to," he pushed. "And I'm sorry." His skin crawled every time he thought about it—he'd felt like—

"I _said_, don't." She glowered at him, and Luke noticed a red rim in her yellow eyes that he hadn't seen before. "It was embarrassment. I was punished for losing, and had to fight through pain and anger until I found the dark side again and won. That's my training." She kept walking. The windows in the corridor showed the beginning of sunset on the horizon, Coruscant's many satellites hanging like beacons in the sky.

It reflected odd light across the contours of her helmet as she slid it closed and said, "The only difference here was that it was you doing it, not Vader."

He'd always known his father did that. It was one of the many things he'd never thought about until now.

The same feeling from earlier manifested in his gut. _Executioner._

"So don't worry, Luke. You're doing everything right. He's definitely proud of you."

She stalked off, the Force agitating in her wake, leaving him standing there with her parting words.

They weren't as much comfort as he wanted them to be.

* * *

Luke hadn't replied with his analysis of the situation by the time Leia woke up, so she decided to clear her head by wandering around Theed some more. Who knew: she might find something of value.

The teal top and blue trousers she donned were just as fashionable and inconspicuous-only-on-Naboo as her top from the previous day, but she found she preferred this outfit much more. The sleeves and shoulders had indigo embroidery on them in the shapes of flowers and birds; for once, when she sensed people noticing her, it was because they liked her clothes and not because they thought she was a threat.

Until she passed by an artist's studio, and froze.

There was tension in the Force. It wasn't directed at her—well, not directly. The Force was being vague, which was an intrinsic part of communing with the Force, but she still felt a flash of resentment at the thought of how clear Palpatine's foresight could be. She grabbed that resentment, held onto it and let it fuel her, until the world sharpened and she could hear that tension like a scream in her ears.

Turmoil, just a few streets over. _Violent_ turmoil, on par with what she'd sensed when she and Luke had first descended into that mess on Kuat, unlike anything she'd ever expected to find on Naboo. In _Theed_.

The Naboo were pacifists.

The sounds of the turmoil were just starting to reach this street now. The artist looked up in her studio, alarmed; several patrons of the café a few doors down looked startled; someone on the upper floor of a residential building stuck their head out the window. The noise was like a chanting, shouting—_angry_, aggressive shouting.

Leia didn't know how far away it was. The sense of it spun in the Force, the anger scorching when she tried to reach for it; she flinched back. Then she lifted her head and set her chin.

Several people in the street gasped as she drew her lightsaber from her bag and lit it—then screamed as she jumped, further than any human should be able to. She perched on a windowsill on the second floor, then leaped again, across the street, to catch the edge of the roof and haul herself onto it.

The Naboo's penchant for domed buildings was working against her; her hands scrabbled for purchase. She barely found it, but she found it nonetheless. Then she scrambled to the top, and looked around.

She was high enough to see this entire quadrant of Theed, the streets unfolding under her feet like she stood on a map. And she could see where the commotion was coming from—several places, in fact.

Riots.

_Riots_ had broken out. In _Theed_. On _Naboo_.

Smoke rose from each pocket of chaos, and it was by that which she tracked their moment, towards the centre of the city, where they converged on—

On the Palace.

She slid off the roof, softened her landing with the Force, and sprinted.

She needed to get there quickly.

Someone shouted after her but she made it to the Palace ahead of the riots, out of breath, tracking their movements through the Force. There was something intentional about the paths they were taking, something calculated, and she didn't like it one bit.

The moment she entered the courtyard a guard trained his blaster on her.

She ripped it out of his hand and sent it scattering across the floor.

The rest of the guards milling about fixed their blasters on her.

"I am an agent of His Majesty the Emperor," she got out through ground teeth, lifting her hands. She didn't have time for this. "There are riots moving this way, and I have come to assist you in crushing them."

"We've got this under control," one of them said. Leia recognised him as the leader based on the others' body language in response to when he spoke. "And ma'am, if they're headed this way, you should probably leave the area—"

Leia scoffed, then turned her back on them.

Fine.

If they weren't going to listen to her, she'd deal with this herself.

She strode out of the courtyard, mind-whirring. She had her tiny blaster, she had her lightsaber, and she had the Force. Would that be enough?

No. Not with only one person.

But if she could delay the riot long enough for the guards to get the Queen of Naboo to safety and barricade the Palace. . . that would be enough.

She scaled the walls of the courtyard, one of the climbing plants proving to be a very useful handhold, and dragged herself once again onto a position overlooking several streets. The small riots had all converged into one by now and were marching down Palace Plaza to— What? Storm the building?

Leia crept closer to a tree, flattened herself to her belly, and hoped no one noticed her.

She watched the leaders of each faction just melt into the crowd as it converged. It was a good mix of people who were marching: there were the well-dressed Naboo and Gungans, perhaps resentful enough of the Empire and drunk on their own righteousness that they thought this might lead to anything but their death; thin, skeletal beings who dragged themselves along only by the fire of their anger, whose uniforms identified them as spice miners from Onoam and Veruna; and lastly there were the others, an eclectic mix of more species than Leia could count, who held themselves like they knew what they were doing and seemed to be the ones in charge. Leia squinted, hoping to get a closer look.

There was a flag-bearer at the front. She narrowed her eyes, then pursed her lips together and _focused_, tugging on that little piece of cloth until it unfurled. . .

She didn't recognise the symbol at first. It was a red arrow, more or less, on a white background, pointing to the bottom left.

The it hit her.

The symbol of Saw Gerrera's Partisans.

Had _he_ organised this? Why? What was there to gain from seizing Naboo?

It was a rhetorical question. She knew the answer: _Prestige_.

Fear.

Recognition.

If they could strike at the heart of the Mid Rim world that had birthed the Emperor in the first place, they suddenly became a real threat. More people would fear them, cave to their demands; more people would flock to them, seeing them as more effective than the main Rebellion. What would they do? Burn the Palace? If they could kidnap the Queen. . .

They couldn't kidnap the Queen.

Leia wouldn't let them.

And a riot wouldn't manage to pull that off. More probable this was a distraction for the main show going on indoors. She briefly considered heading in to protect Her Majesty herself, but judging by the courtyard guards' reactions, her presence would not be welcome.

So she'd better deal with this as quickly as possible, so the guards could go back to protecting the Queen as quickly as possible.

She fixed her eyes on the flag bearer. He was a Tognath, wearing the mask needed for him to survive in an oxygen-rich atmosphere.

With a flick of her fingers, she yanked him into the air by the throat and threw him into the crowd.

The flag fell, trampled by a dozen appendages.

The Tognath still clutched his throat, gagging and flailing and _screeching_ with enough urgency to distract the people around him—including the leader. She, a stocky, blue-skinned Twi'lek, paused to frown down at him.

The rest of the procession halted when she did.

Leia took one moment to be mildly impressed by the fact they were so under the Twi'lek's thrall, then opened fire.

The first shot struck the Twi'lek right between her lekku; she went down in a spray of blood.

Someone screamed, and there was chaos.

Some of the rioters—particularly the Naboo—turned and fled amid the screams.

Leia drew in their sudden fear, apprehension, then held out her hand. The Force rolled towards them like a tsunami. The wet crackle of bones sounded above the shouting, and lives winked out in the Force.

She fired again. The next most senior-looking leader got a bolt to the back of his head.

One rioter—a miner, by the looks of him—jerked his head up in her direction, and caught sight of her. He shouted to his companions; she gave him a bolt between his eyes for the trouble. But it was too late.

A bolt hit the wall beneath her; she flinched instinctively. Yanked herself to her feet, leapt off the wall, and fired several more shots into the crowd.

They hit their targets with a painful accuracy.

But so did someone else's: pain burst in her lower leg.

She grunted, glancing down quickly enough to see blood soak her trousers. She scowled.

She'd liked this outfit.

No time to dwell on that now. She'd helped the best she could, she'd wiped out half the rioters and reduced the threat to the Queen's life. If the guards were too incompetent to handle it from here, then they almost deserved what happened, in Leia's book.

Now, to reduce the threat to _her_ life, she needed to scram.

It was hard running with a blaster wound in her leg. After the first street, glancing back to see a few furious Partisans—probably angry at the loss of their leader—hounding after her, she risked taking a minute to rip some of the cloth off her t-shirt to staunch the bleeding. She gritted her teeth against the pain.

Then the Partisans were on top of her.

The first one fired a shot, and they didn't live long enough to fire another one. Her lightsaber was in her hand and lit before the blaster had even finished recoiling; the bolt flew right back to shoot the Aqualish through the face.

"_Inquisitor_," a human Partisan hissed, eyeing her red blade.

"Don't insult me," she spat, and shot him.

The rest shot her all at once and there was nothing she could do except dive out of the way, hope she didn't die, and run for it again.

Once she was out of point-blank range, she could guide the bolts away from their target, missing her and hitting the street instead, but they _just kept coming_.

So she just kept running.

The wound was hurting more and more—she wasn't doing it any favours, she suspected, putting this much stress on her leg, but there wasn't much she could do. She was nearing the docking bays now, but even once she got aboard and blasted these idiots to smithereens with her borderline illegal cannons, she wasn't sure she had decent medical supplies on board. Well, decent _enough_.

She ducked her head as another bolt barely missed her.

_Worry about that later_.

A bolt came for her body—her lightsaber snapped back, deflecting two into the ground in quick succession. The docking bays were in sight now, looming straight ahead; she near-slammed into the door, jabbed the key code to opened it, and dashed inside.

The doors slid shut on her pursuers with a hiss.

She let out a hiss herself. She closed her eyes, scrunched them tightly, and took a deep breath.

She'd had worse injuries, but _kreth_ this one hurt.

She limped up the boarding ramp and collapsed onto her bunk in the bedroom with a sigh. Digging the medical kit out from under her bed and applying bacta to the wound helped ease her mind somewhat, but her thoughts still whirled by faster than she could understand them.

She couldn't stay on Naboo.

If any of the rioters survived or escaped, they'd be on the hunt for her. She couldn't very well start digging for information about Amidala when both the authorities and the populace knew she was an Imperial agent—if that angle had worked, she would've started with that. The entire point of Palpatine sending _her_ was subtlety, which just made the fact that Tsabin seemed to see right through her even more concerning. . .

She needed to investigate other areas where Senator Amidala had been linked.

Coruscant was her next best bet, but she _lived_ on Coruscant, _literally in the woman's apartment_. If there'd been anything to find there, she would have found it already.

If there was anything _more_ to find there, Luke would find it.

Maybe, she mused, hopping across the room to the desk her datapad lay on, there was something to be found in Amidala's writings?

Amidala had been connected to a great many planets. She'd created the Mid Rim Cooperation for Bromlarch after its aqueduct was damaged, and that led to a strong alliance between other Mid Rim worlds and many in the Core as well. She'd had a brief romantic relationship with Senator Rush Clovis of Scipio, but he was dead and Leia doubted the rest of the Muuns had anything to say on the matter.

Alderaan and Chandrila had also been close allies of hers—_and_ their senators were still alive for her to question.

But the point was that they were close _allies_. If she started stirring up dust in her investigation, it might alert Amidala that she suspected she hadn't died with the Republic.

Leia's leg twinged; she thought back to what had just happened.

Forget about not stirring up dust.

So. Alderaan and Chandrila were both perfectly viable options, and when she got there she'd grill every tiny detail out of their senators. But both were in the Core, and would require a good few days' worth of hyperspace travel to get to. If there was a closer source, one she could research briefly just to get as broad an idea as possible. . .

Tatooine.

The name scrolled across her datapad almost casually, Amidala's mention of it in this letter a throwaway line. _When I was on Tatooine, I saw injustice unlike anything we have on Naboo. . ._

It was a long shot. She probably wouldn't find anything. But Tatooine was only a day's travel away, and she couldn't deny something felt. . . _right_ about this. She'd been assured by her father, the Emperor, every person who'd ever been there, that Tatooine was a deplorable place full of deplorable people, as far from the bright centre of the galaxy that one could get.

But she wanted to go.

She decided it was the Force, but a part of her knew it _wasn't_. A part of her knew it was more memory, long-buried and long-forgotten, pushing its way back to the surface.

A thought flashed to mind: a seven-year-old and her twin brother, climbing into their father's lap, confused and afraid. _I keep dreaming of a desert. . ._

Yes, she decided, pushing herself to her feet and heading for the cockpit. She'd go to Tatooine, whether she could learn anything about Amidala from it or not.

And maybe then she'd work out what her mind was trying to tell her.


	9. Mirage

Luke staggered into the apartment paranoid and twitchy.

He could sense that his father was in the house, and he did _not_ want to have to explain what he'd found. Nor was he sure he'd be able to look at Vader without seeing the man he used to be superimposed over the top of him, that face Luke resembled so much, the arrogance in his stance.

His father tried to start a conversation with him anyway.

Luke was tense, his nerves fraying from the revelation and his interaction with Jade. He should have known better than to hide that from his father.

The moment Luke walked into the living room, Vader loomed at the doorway and asked, "Are you all right?"

There was a dark worry in Vader's voice, and Luke felt the dark side constrict around him like a hug, one of the closest things his father gave to physical affection.

Luke tried to grin, grimaced instead, then aborted the gesture. "Yeah. I'm just. . ." —_lonely confused missing Leia afraid nervous paranoid angry self-loathing_— ". . .tired."

It wasn't a lie, but Vader picked up on the deception anyway. He tilted his head—Luke imagined that cocky young man from the holo narrowed his eyes at him, and was concerned at how vivid the image was—and pressed, "Is your work in the Archives bothering you? Do you miss your sister?"

"Of course I miss Leia. It's like there's a hole in my chest." He didn't mean to snap at his father—indeed, he blanched in horror after he realised what he'd done, he'd _snapped_ at his _father_—but he _was_ tired. His eyes hurt.

Vader was silent for a moment. "After a while," he said, "You get used to the emptiness."

Luke stepped forward, reaching for his hand. "Father. . .?"

Vader let him take his hand; Luke squeezed it tightly. He sent a wave of adoration over their bond and felt Vader relax. He dropped Luke's hand to brush hair out of his face; his fingers lingered on his cheek.

"I don't _want_ you to have to get used to it," he amended, "but, if needs be. . . you do."

Luke smiled faintly. He could feel exhaustion creeping in at the edge of his senses.

"Once we overthrow Palpatine, you won't have to work in the Archives anymore," his father said lightly, picking up on his thoughts.

"Even if I annoy you?"

"You could never annoy me." The words were soft, then Vader tempered them with a wry, "Though I suppose it might teach you patience for once."

"If you think it's best that I work there," Luke murmured, "I'd be happy to do it." His father wasn't all-powerful, but he was the greatest man Luke knew—and he trusted him with everything he had.

Vader's touch softened, and he made to rest his hand on Luke shoulder. "I know you would." He smiled at him.

Luke couldn't see the smile behind the mask, but he knew it was there. He could feel it in the rush of affection across their bond, see it in the way his helmet tilted forwards, hear it in the gentle words. No holo image could show him that.

_This_ was his father, not the young, brash man who'd once worn his face. This was the man Luke idolised, and this was the man who was important to him.

He didn't need anything else.

* * *

Tatooine was just as disgusting as her father had always described.

Her brief correspondence with the Imperials in Bestine had been enough for her to completely lose faith in any Imperial presence on the planet—well, any _competent_ Imperial presence. She left the communications officer squawking as she suddenly abandoned the capital city and took off for another part of the planet.

The only reason she'd headed to Bestine in the first place was to make sure she'd have Imperial backup if she needed it, but at this point she didn't even want that. They'd probably just get in the way.

According to the datachips, Padmé Amidala had landed outside Mos Espa on her brief—and, as far as was recorded, _only_—visit to Tatooine, and interacted with the residents there. So Leia headed in that direction first, though she knew she was kidding herself.

She didn't expect to find anything on Tatooine. The woman had been here once, thirty years ago; any trace of here would have been buried by the sands and the passage of time long ago. She was here because she wanted to be.

She was here because something called to her.

So she poked around Mos Espa for a while. Seeing the slaves, human and Twi'lek and so many other species, boiled her blood, but she held herself in check despite the anguish she could feel in this place.

Clamping down on her shields, she allowed the fleeting thought that just _standing_ here would have been torture to Luke: he couldn't shield nearly as well as she could, and he'd always been overly sensitive to emotions. It was useful sometimes, as it had been with the Velts, but it was a double-edged blade that cut _him_ just as deeply.

Force, she missed him. If he was here she'd probably be talking him out of starting an impromptu slave revolt or something, and it would be almost cathartic knowing she wasn't the only one who felt this way.

But he wasn't here.

She was alone.

So she squared her shoulders, ignored the residual pain in her leg, and just forced herself to keep moving.

As expected, she found nothing of relevance. But something about the place dazzled her anyway—the sands, the way the sun gleamed off the rundown buildings, the brush of the homespun clothes she'd donned to blend in with the locals. It felt like something out of a dream, and maybe that comparison came from the fact that it _was_.

Tatooine was the desert she and Luke had been dreaming about their whole lives.

It made her linger, constantly watching and searching for some meaning behind it. Something deeper, beyond the misery that permeated every inch. Why had this suns-stunned world haunted them for so long?

One Rodian vendor scoffed at something a customer told them, weighing up the shrivelled. . . thing. . . they seemed to be selling for meat as they said, "You think you could've competed in a podrace? You're human."

"A human won them before," the man insisted, dark brows creasing. "I just got accepted into the Imperial Academy, Skystrike—"

"I don't care," the Rodian shot back. Leia suspected that what she meant was, _I don't know what that means. _No one knew anything about the Empire, all the way out here. "Skywalker was the only human who ever won one of those things, and he was magic. I don't care how good you are."

Leia sensed the human man wanting to argue, but he just scowled and stalked off, wrinkled meaty thing dangling from his hand.

The Rodian turned her large eyes on Leia, but by that time her back was turned and she was walking away herself.

_Skywalker_. The name rang a bell in her mind, but she couldn't have said why. She wracked her memory for it, just as she wracked her memory for the images of the desert she'd always received, but the answers were just as much mirages as they always were. They shimmered tantalisingly at a distance, then vanished as she got closer to the truth.

She gritted her teeth and pulled her long scarf across her face. She'd try the next city.

Mos Eisley was even more disgusting than Mos Espa, if that was possible, but only because it seemed more focused on kissing Jabba's backside than actually getting anything done. It was a free spaceport, supposedly, but anytime someone passed through they were reported to the slug.

One of his cronies tried to get her to pay a ridiculous amount of money to dock in the port. She'd shot him through the head for his troubles.

She'd changed her outfits so she couldn't be linked to the young woman visiting Mos Espa for mysterious reasons, replaced the bacta patch she'd stuck on her calf, and wandered around the city for a while. This place was less familiar—though, again, she couldn't have said why. She managed to procure a map of the surrounding area from a vendor who stared at her a little too intently. She felt his eyes along her back as she walked off; her skin crawled.

She studied the map carefully, taking note of which names and landscapes sparked that mirage, and which didn't. She'd completely abandoned the pretence of searching for Amidala by now; she wanted to find out what was going on in her _own_ head, first.

_Bestine_. The name was as dull in her mind as the ink it was written in on the map.

_Jundland Wastes. _Familiar, vaguely, but the way a long-forgotten word might be, or a word that sounded similar to one. For all she knew, it could be anything.

The mirage was strongest around the tiny town marked _Anchorhead_. She was starting to think this illusion was like her mind trying desperately to hide something from her: the closer she got, the stronger the misdirection and the shimmer.

She was extremely focused on the map, but that didn't mean she didn't notice when a man came up to her. She assessed him thoroughly as she approached, reading the gist of his thoughts if not the thoughts themselves. He meant her no harm.

She didn't look up from the map until his shadow fell across her, an almost welcome relief from the twin suns. When she did, her lips tightened slightly.

It was the young man from earlier, with the dark hair and neat moustache—the one who claimed he'd been accepted into Skystrike. She hadn't sensed a lie when he said so.

Impressive. That was one talented pilot, then.

"Can I help you?" she asked. Her tone wasn't _sharp_, but it was curt—she didn't have time to entertain him unless he promised to be useful.

"Oh, no," he answered, floundering slightly but still strangely solid. "I was wondering if I could help you? You seem lost."

Leia narrowed her eyes at him minutely. The words rang true.

"I am," she pretended to admit, one of her hands fluttering to hug her stomach. Maybe he _could_ be useful, if he was so intent on being so. "My mother passed away recently, and she told me I had relatives on this planet. At least—I had." She let herself babble; it fed into her persona. "Whether or not I still have them is what I came to find out, I guess."

"I understand. Do you know what their names were?"

There was really only one thing Leia could say. There was only one name that had sparked that mirage. "Skywalker."

The man's reaction was instant and telling: his eyebrows shot up, his mouth parted slightly. If he expected to go into Imperial service, he'd need to learn to hide his emotions a lot better than that. He'd be eaten alive by all the backstabbing required to reach the top.

"Skywalker," he said. "They were definitely a family here—Anakin Skywalker was a slave, I believe. He was freed because he was the first human ever to win the Boonta Eve Classic podrace, then became a navigator on a spice freighter."

A spice dealer? What would be so important about _him_?

"He's long dead, but I knew his children. Twins. They—" His face fell. "They disappeared around ten years ago, and their homestead was burned."

"Oh." She let herself look crestfallen, crushed.

Sure enough, it evoked pity in him. "I'm sorry." He scratched the back of his neck. "I. . . could take you to what's left of the homestead, if you like? I'm Biggs by the way," he said suddenly, holding out his hand. "Biggs Darklighter."

She took his hand and shook it. "Liana Cedel," she lied. It wasn't the first time she'd used that alias, and it certainly wouldn't be the last.

"The homestead's out by Anchorhead, it's about an hour by speeder," he said, meeting her eyes calmly. She decided she liked him—he seemed honest enough, and it was refreshing.

But—

_Anchorhead. _

The plot thickened.

She shrugged. "I've got time."

They left almost immediately, though Leia had to squeeze into Biggs's speeder next to all the other mechanical parts and strange meaty _things_ he'd bought. He laughed when she made a face at the smell.

"You're clearly not from around here."

Not. She most certainly was _not_.

That didn't stop everything from feeling familiar.

The feeling hit her strongest when they arrived at the homestead, now barely recognisable as something that was once lived in. Half of even the sand-blasted stone had been scoured away, leaving the place cracked open like a convor egg shell, the insides bleached and windswept until nothing remained. Leia was surprised this much was even left standing.

The sight of it sent a painful pang through her chest, though she couldn't have said why.

"This is all that's left of your relatives." Biggs's face was carefully blank, in a way that confused Leia enough she probed his mind for answers. He was feeling his own distant grief at the loss—he'd been friends with the Skywalkers, and he'd apparently used to visit this place as often as he did his own home—but he didn't want to intrude on hers. "I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault." There was a lump in her throat—_why_? She wasn't attached to this. She had _nothing to do with this_, dreams of no dreams.

Waking up in the middle of the night, screaming, Luke screaming in synchrony with her, her father trying desperately to calm them both down—

_Was it the desert again?_

"What—" She swallowed. "What was. . . Anakin, did you say his name was? What was he like?"

Perhaps more information could teach her more—

"I don't actually know," Biggs admitted. "He left Tatooine after he was freed and never came back, but he died just under twenty years ago. The twins were sent to live with their aunt and uncle by marriage. Owen and Beru Lars. Well. Beru Whitesun Lars."

The mirage flickered around those names as well.

"What were the twins called?" she asked. "What were _they_ like?"

"Reckless, if I remember correctly. Very cheerful. One was a boy, one was a girl. You look a lot like the girl, actually," he added. "I can see the family resemblance." He smiled a little.

She smiled back, if only to keep her cover. Her mind was whirring, and she was probably a little harsh when she pressed, "Yes, but what were the twins called?"

He seemed taken aback, but answered automatically, "Luke and Leia Skywalker."

Leia's world screeched to a halt.

* * *

Luke had been searching for his father's identity for hours now.

He'd decided that who his father had been before wasn't important, and he stuck by that principle. But he wanted to know who _he_ was.

What would his last name have been—if not Naberrie—had his father seen fit to give him one? He was curious, he wanted to know, and it was tearing him apart.

He had no official standing in the Empire. He was Lord Vader's son—but what did that _mean_? Who was he? Who _would_ he be?

He was indefatigable in his research.

He'd worked out that his father had likely been a Jedi before he realised how corrupt they were, so the first thing Luke did was search through file after file on every Jedi he could find.

His search remained fruitless. The files on the Jedi were restricted, but that wasn't a problem: he had the codes and clearance to get through it all. If his father or the Emperor asked about what he was doing looking through there, he could say that he was researching his enemy, just as they'd instructed—even if the idea of lying to his father made his stomach turn.

The _problem_, however, was actually finding the man.

He was a ghost. Occasionally he'd be in the back of holos, never at the forefront, and Luke began to suspect that when he'd become Darth Vader, his father had ordered all previous recollections of him destroyed.

Except Luke and Leia.

So it was nearly _impossible_ to find anything concrete. One couldn't expect the records of even the meticulously bureaucratic Republic to be perfect, and with the chaos of the Clone Wars and the Purges, not much had been recorded. Luke was left to look for pinpricks in between tears and gashes.

But there was one place that _did_ have effective documentation, that _did_ have the pinpricks he was looking for.

The records of who had been elevated to Jedi Master, and who had taken a seat on the Council.

It was a major ceremony to become a Jedi Knight, an hour; it was an even greater honour to be made a Master. Their names were all dutifully recorded, and if they had the unfathomable luck to sit on the Council as well, that was taken down as well.

The turnover was fast during the Clone Wars. So many died, so many proved themselves. When one Council member perished, they were quickly replaced, then again, and again, round and round. Each instance written down for posterity by the Jedi Order's scholar.

Adi Gallia: died on Felucia, her seat filled by her cousin, Stass Allie.

Shaak Ti: took the seat of a Master of unknown species by the name of Yaddle, after Yaddle passed away of a truly ancient age. She'd apparently been of the same species as Grandmaster Yoda, but Luke didn't have a clue what that species might be.

And then there was the man who'd replaced Master Even Piell on the Council.

That man was human, the youngest Council member ever in his early twenties, and he had not been granted the rank of Master.

His name was Anakin Skywalker.

It was the only instance of seeing the name that he'd come across in all of his research, and that in itself, just how thoroughly it had been buried, was telling enough. He'd have known even without the burst of familiarity and _rightness_ the Force granted him.

But the most compelling factor: he had been appointed to the Council as Chancellor Palpatine's personal representative.

His father had been Palpatine's right-hand man from the start.

_And now he's plotting treason against him._

Luke did his best to shake the thought away. He had the name.

Anakin Skywalker.

Which made Luke and Leia Skywalkers as well, right?

Luke Skywalker.

It sounded. . . familiar. It sounded _right_.

He grinned, and had to hide the expression from Horada's questioning glance. He was Luke Skywalker.

He was _Luke Skywalker_—

His comlink buzzed sharply.

He ignored it.

It buzzed again, insistent. Seeing the glares he was receiving, he hastily stepped into the empty corridor outside before he switched it on. His eyes blew wide.

It was his sister.

"Leia!" he said excitedly. "Great—I have something to tell you."

* * *

"If it's about Amidala, not now." Leia may have snapped a little more than usual—more than _necessary_—but she was tense. Vibrating out of her skin. She'd managed to clamp down on her shock when Biggs had first said the words, the whole of the speeder ride back, when she'd said farewell to him and dashed into her ship, but _no more_. "I have something important to tell you—"

_"So do I—"_

"—I found out who we are."

_"—I found out who Father was."_

* * *

Leia blinked. _"Anakin Skywalker?"_

"Yes." Luke creased his brow—how had she known that? How _long_ had she—

_"I just found out, don't look so betrayed."_ Again, the words were snappish, but he knew his sister. She was excited. She was agitated. She wasn't angry. _"Just as I found out that we used to be called—"_

* * *

_"Luke and Leia Skywalker?"_

Leia wrinkled her nose. "Are those your magnificent powers of deduction?"

_"You bet." _The small hologram of him, projected over the console, grinned broadly.

"Very impressive," she drawled. "But remember when Father said that he _found_ us?"

Luke sat forward; she had his full attention now.

"I know where he found us from."

* * *

"Where?" Luke was struggling not to let his mouth hang open like a fish. "Where are you now?"

_"Tatooine." _Leia grimaced. _"Apparently we were raised by some extended family until little Luke and Leia Skywalker 'disappeared' at age seven."_

"A desert planet?" Age seven was when the dreams of the endless expanses of sand had started—this might begin to explain _why_.

_And_ explain why their father had been so panicked, so _angry_, whenever they got them. . .

_"It's not like we have any specific or clear memories from before age seven. What's your earliest memory?"_

He thought for a moment. "You nearly shoving me down the stairs on Mustafar."

_"Me too. Isn't that odd, developing memories that late?"_

Luke shrugged. "I don't know. It's not like we've spoken to a great many normal human children."

_"No,"_ he saw Leia hide her smile, _"we haven't. But I don't think it's normal. I think_—_"_

"That we've had a mind block put in our heads?" He frowned at the idea.

_"It's possible." _She sighed. _"We'd better ask Father when I get back."_

He snorted. "That'll go well."

_"We'll ask _nicely_."_

"_You_ know how to be _nice_?"

_"Is this really the time to be mocking me?"_

"It's always time to mock my sister."

Leia made a face. _"Point taken."_ She frowned, then said, _"I_—_"_

A beeping.

She frowned further. _"I'm getting an incoming message from. . . Palpatine." _Her eyes widened. _"I'll call you back later, Luke."_

"Looking forward to it."

The comlink winked off.

Luke stared at it for a few moments, then sighed. Tucked it into his pocket. Headed back to the Archives.

He had work to do.

But Leia's revelations distracted him. They buzzed at the back of his mind. The more he learned, it seemed, the more questions he had.

Who were these relatives they'd lived with for seven years?

Why had they been given to them, and not their father?

And, perhaps the most haunting one: _Why hadn't his father told him?_

He was so deep in thought as he sat at his desk that at first it took him a moment to tell something was wrong.

The place was too quiet. Half the people who'd been here before had left, including Horada. But a few still remained, including one person browsing the architectural section of the shelves, who seemed. . . off.

Luke probed him with the Force. Yes, something was definitely off. The person—a human male, perhaps in his late twenties or thirties with nervous, twitching hands—_radiated_ a calmness that was at odds with his general demeanour.

One of the datapads on Luke's desk had been taken from near to the architectural section. He picked it up and sauntered over, forcing his gait to stay smooth, his steps loud but not too loud. The man stiffened minutely with each approaching step, glancing at Luke as he slotted the datapad into its place on the shelf, then hastily glancing away when Luke looked at him.

"I'm sorry, sir," Luke said lightly, "but weapons aren't allowed in the Imperial Archives." He nodded to the scuffed blaster at the man's hip—perhaps the most obtrusive sign that whoever he was, he wasn't one of the ordinary patrons. They'd rather be defenceless than face Horada's wrath. Luke couldn't really blame them.

He held out his hand. "If you give it to me, I can put it in the draw with the other weapons, for you to pick up on your way out?" The man was still tense, so Luke softened the exchange with a quip: "I'm told that the last time a weapon was allowed in here, there was utter chaos. That was years ago, so it's probably overkill, but better safe than sorry, eh?"

It seemed to convince the man. He tucked he datapad he'd been holding under his arm, and unhooked the blaster from his waist. He held it in his hands briefly before passing it over.

Luke's hand closed around the grip firmly, lest he change his mind and decide to take it back.

The man noticed that, clearly: his eyes narrowed, and his Force sense thrummed like a wire about to break.

Luke was convinced he was a Rebel.

But. . . why here? What was he after?

They could find that out, he decided, during the interrogation.

He flicked the blaster to stun and pointed it. His hand was steady. "Don't move."

The man's datapad clattered to the floor as he lunged.

Luke pulled the trigger, but there was no discharge, no blue ring sparking through his body and shutting down his systems like a power surge. A fist collided with his face and he hit the floor hard.

Lights flashed before his eyes. Footsteps, loud and fast but fading, indignant shouts.

A red flashing light in front of him. He shoved himself onto his hands and knees, scowling at the blaster on the floor next to him, at the crimson display that read _NO POWER_.

The Rebel had removed the power cell before he handed it over.

_Son of a—_

At least he'd left the datapad behind in his rush to escape. Luke took the time to dump it on his desk—he could inspect it later—then seized on the man's terrified mind in the Force, and gave chase.

* * *

Leia didn't know what to think as her comlink spewed out the image of Palpatine, wrinkled face in exquisite detail, and she sank to one knee. She was nowhere near completing her mission—she'd been away for three weeks at most. What was there for him to say to her?

Leia gritted her teeth, but knelt in front of the hologram. Keeping her eyes to the ground, subservient, she waited for him to speak.

She didn't have to wait long.

"Were you in the middle of something, child? Have I interrupted you?"

There was something mocking in the words, something which dug at Leia, but she crushed her resentment. "It's fine, Master. I was merely talking with Luke."

"Ah, yes. Understandable." His tone implied it was no such thing. "Have you been missing your brother?"

She swallowed. "Yes, Master." Then, because she'd never voluntarily hid anything from him and it would be suspicious to start now— "More than anything."

He watched her for a moment, but he could feel the truth of the words in the Force. They _were_ true.

He smiled. "Then I have good news for you."

She didn't respond, just stayed, head to the ground, and waited for him to continue.

"Whereabouts are you now? I'm told you've left Naboo."

_I have spies. I can find out everything I need to know. Don't try to hide it from me._

She wasn't planning on it.

"Tatooine, Master."

The only reason she heard the sharp intake of breath was because she was listening for it.

So. He _had_ known about their. . . past. . . here.

"I was following a lead on Amidala. You know how fond the Rebels are of hiding in the Outer Rim." None of it was technically a lie. She let her distaste—for _him_, but it could be easily misconstrued—seep into her voice as she continued, "I didn't find anything to do with her."

_I found so much more instead._

If Palpatine noticed her equivocation, he said nothing. "A disappointment, to be sure, but an unsurprising one. My dear, I've had time to cool my head since we last spoke, and I apologise for my hasty decision. From what I've heard, your actions on Naboo were to be commended. Your quick thinking saved my beloved home planet from who knows how much chaos and anarchy, and the Queen was saved by it. I've decided your talents would better serve me at home, and I would like you to return."

"Return?" It was everything Leia wanted—she needed to talk to Luke, her father, _as soon as possible_—but she knew how he expected her to react. Any other reaction would be cause for suspicion. "But Master, I haven't succeeded in my mission—"

"It was foolish of me to expect you would." He smiled kindly, but she heard the insult in the generosity. "You are a child, and scores upon scores of adults have failed to find our quarry. Furthermore, you and your brother have always resisted working separately. It was a poor decision on my part to separate you." He smiled wider, and she couldn't help smiling back his time. She could go back to Luke! "I'd like you to return."

She lowered her head again. "I—" she forced the words out. "Thank you, Master. I'll return as soon as possible."

"I look forward to it."

The hologram winked out.

Leia lifted herself from the kneeling position and stared at the comlink. It was probably too late to comm Luke back—Force knew he'd probably moved onto something else already—but she smiled to herself, broadly. This was perfect.

She was going home.


	10. Second Shadow

Luke legged it out of the library as fast as he could go, his heart hammering in his chest. He'd activated his comlink and snapped out a quick summary of the situation to Palace security, ordered them to lock down all exits, halt all movement. There was a brief moment where he wasn't sure if they were going to take his orders—he _was_ in disgrace, after all—but once he'd summarised the situation (and thrown in a few cutting threats) they'd jumped into action.

Then he gave chase.

The Rebel's Force signature darted through the halls quickly, erratically, with no apparent rhyme or reason to his movements, but it was enough for Luke to sense him. No one else was that panicked, that on edge, even with the guards halting them in their places and the general tense atmosphere of the Imperial Palace. The Rebel stood out like a faint lodestar: dim and dying, but enough to guide one's way.

He was heading downwards.

There were fewer people in the lower levels, Luke knew—many were abandoned, save for a few _personal_ dungeons of Palpatine's, and there was no reason to return. In fact, enough retained the veneer they had when they'd been the old Jedi Temple that it could cast suspicion onto whatever curious soul wandered them.

If it was odd, living atop the past—the Jedi Temple was the Palace of the Sith Empire, the apartment of the Padmé Amidala now housed the Empire's greatest agents—Luke didn't waste a thought on it.

The Rebel was headed down there.

Logical for them, perhaps, but it was genuinely the worst thing the person could have done in that moment.

When Luke and Leia had first arrived on Coruscant, amid far too much pomp and ceremony for a ten-year-old's taste, they'd spent every spare moment they could running through the Palace, several royal red guards having to jog and curse to keep up. As the years passed and they began to know the place intrinsically, those red guards would often mysteriously lose sight of them.

They knew the shortcuts, the hiding places, the corners and corridors that looked dangerous but were as secure as could be if you trod carefully. The construction of the Imperial Palace atop the Jedi Temple had muddled the foundations and the lower levels in a way that couldn't be seen on blueprints, no matter how recent they were. The guards had never had a hope of finding them.

Initially, the one person who _had_ had a hope of finding them had been their father, who knew their minds through the Force as well as he knew his own. But he still had to navigate the treacherous passages, crumbling mortar, his lightsaber a poor substitute for the sunlight of the upper levels. It took a while.

Once they'd learned how to shield effectively, it took even longer.

This Rebel might be scurrying to the shadows to hide from the spotlight. . . but the shadows had always been the twins' playmates.

The deserted levels meant he stood out like a satellite on a starless night, and Luke had no issues tracking him. The man had slowed to a walk by now, presumably believing himself out of danger. No one would find him this far down, right?

There must be an entrance down here that the Rebels had cleared while they'd been in Kuat, Luke mused as he set about finding him. There had certainly been none viable before.

Luke kept his footsteps light; sound echoed loudly down here. He could hear the man's panting breaths like he was standing right behind him.

He was headed for one of the training rooms—or, at least, near to it. The training room closest to the equator, next to the younglings' dormitories—

Luke had an idea.

Fear was not something he actively sought. If his opponent wasn't smart enough to be afraid of him, that was on them. But he knew his father enjoyed the sensation of power it gave him—and it could also be a useful tool, sometimes.

He let himself tread heavily; the decisive _click-clack_ of his boots skittered away from him and down the hallway. He felt the man freeze, terror spiking: the echoes of his pursuer seemed to come from all around him.

Luke softened his tread again and broke into a light jog, as quiet as the wind.

He let some of his anger—bitterness he'd had to be in the Archives in the first place, seething resentment at his still-throbbing jaw, disgust at the thought the man had had the gall to penetrate so deeply into the heart of the Empire he served—run free.

Ice began to crystallise on the air.

Another spike of emotion from the man—apprehension, this time. Thoughts bombarded him: was this. . . normal? He was in the corpse of the Jedi Temple after all; the place had been picked clean and left to rot in the darkness. Was it. . . haunted?

Ridiculous, the man dismissed. Exaggerated stories of Vader and his spawn's witchcraft were messing with his head.

Amused, Luke light his lightsaber. That sound reverberated down the halls as well.

The man flinched. _Ghosts. . .?_

_Get a grip! Ghosts don't exist._

Luke scoffed at the man's rationalisation. While the Force probably resorted to something as crude as _ghosts_ only on rare occasions, that didn't mean they didn't or couldn't exist. Everyone left traces of who they were, what they built; Coruscant was full of them. Buildings on top of buildings, billions of people eking out their lives in an ever-changing dichotomy of the dark and the light. Property shifted, people shifted, the _galaxy_ shifted, and people went on regardless, entirely unaware of the imprints around them.

They were _living_ on a planet of ghosts.

It had been. . . dizzying. . . when Luke had first arrived.

But he had wasted enough time on games. The man was tense, nervous, everything short of terrified. It wouldn't take much to push him over the edge.

He was heading for the training room—was nearly _at _the training room. Luke reached out, used the Force to tug on a wall he _knew_ was unstable. . .

It crumbled directly in front of the man.

He jerked back, heart-pounding.

Coincidence or not? He couldn't decide. But that had been his only exit.

_Come on,_ Luke urged, _take the bait. . ._

The man turned to the door nearest—the only other door in the corridor that wasn't conveniently blocked off. Luke held his breath. . .

. . .and the man walked right into the younglings' dormitory, just as he'd anticipated.

The man's horror wasn't as sharp an emotion as his fear, dull-edged. It began as an idle observation of a pale, dusty item his foot collided with and sent skittering away into the shadows. Then he saw another, and another—and it began to dawn on him.

The room had two entrances, on two separate levels. Luke took a brief shortcut and emerged into the mezzanine above the Rebel, careful not to be heard before he wanted.

He needn't have bothered. The truth had hit the man by now, sucker-punched him in the gut, leaving him breathless. His eyes blew wide in the faint light of his glowrod.

When Luke and Leia had been thirteen and even more dramatic than they were now, they'd called this place the Chamber of Bones.

The reason why was fairly clear.

This was where the corpse of every Jedi Master, Knight, Padawan and youngling had been dragged after Order 66. The clonetroopers had piled them all in here and set them aflame. A funeral pyre the galaxy would never see.

They'd burned until the flesh had peeled from their body and disintegrated, only their bones remaining. Then Palpatine had ordered they stop, the fires be put out, and the bones kept in that one room in the lowest reaches of the Palace.

This was where his master came when he wanted to gloat in a more personal manner. This was where all the lightsabers taken from fallen Jedi—save the ones his father kept as trophies—had been thrown. Their glinting hilts lay among the bones, the ashes and ruins of a failed, meaningless order. A _dead_ order.

Someday, even the ghost of it would vanish off of Coruscant forever, as all things were wont to do.

Luke and Leia would have been banned from coming here, had their father had his way, but Palpatine had said he wanted to show them exactly where the Jedi Order's failures had led them. So they'd come anyway, and played among the ghosts and the shadows.

Now, the man stared around in a sort of muted terror. Luke couldn't really blame him: he supposed that if he stumbled upon a room full of children's bones, he might be a little bit fazed as well.

The man reached with shaking fingers for a lightsaber hilt near to his foot. I was too dark and too distant for Luke to make out any of the hilt's characteristics, but there was a _snap-hiss_ as the man pressed the ignition button experimentally, and a vivid yellow blade erupted from the emitter.

He stared at it, wide-eyed, then held it out in front of him. His eyes travelled along the hilt, up the blade. . . and further.

Further, to where by the light of the glowrod and the saber, Luke's pale features stood out like a phantom's.

The man screamed.

Luke reigned in his grin, lit his lightsaber and jumped.

He landed with a _crunch_, punching holes straight through two skeletons' ribcages and skidding forwards, the Force softening his landing. The man backed off, drenched in fear, but a wave of Luke's hand and the door behind him locked.

Luke took a step forward. His lightsaber cast an eerie glow across the bones. "Why were you in the Archives?"

_Use_ that fear—that was what all of this had been about. Terrify your opponent before the confrontation even begins, and the battle's half won. He needed information; now, the man was all the more ready to give it.

Theoretically.

The man flinched back at the question, but he set his jaw and stubbornly avoided Luke's gaze.

He was still holding the yellow lightsaber out in front of him.

There was a blur of red, a shout of pain, and that lightsaber fell to the ground—along with the hand holding it.

The man crumpled. Luke punched him in the face,

A wheezing, choking sound; blood seeped onto Luke's hand, the floor. He ignored it.

"Why were you in the Archives?" he repeated, low and dangerous.

The security failings apparent in his infiltration wasn't his focus right now: someone else could deal with that. There was his stolen uniform to examine; witnesses to interview; surveillance to pore over.

What he couldn't find from any of that—what he _needed_ to know—was _why_.

The man spat blood in his face and lashed out with his leg.

Luke staggered back momentarily, already recovering from the blow, but it was enough time for the man to get his remaining hand up and flash the glowrod in his face.

It made no difference: it dazzled him but didn't slow him; he had the Force, and that was all he needed. He just shoved himself forward, slamming him against the locked door, and waited for the spots to clear.

But it made a difference to the man.

His arms went limp, the glowrod tumbling out of his grip; a breath rushed out of him. His shock was resonant in the Force.

When Luke's vision cleared, he was staring at him.

"Kriff," the man said, more blood spurting from his nose with every breath. "You're a _kid_."

Luke ground his teeth together and punched him again.

The man sunk to the floor, still staring. Then he started talking.

"How old are you—sixteen? Seventeen?" He shook his head. "You're the same age as my son was. You—" Realisation hit him. His eyes flicked down to Luke's lightsaber. "You're one of the demon twins, aren't you? Vader's spawn."

Luke crouched down in front of him. "Who I am is irrelevant. What's important is that I'm the one holding a lightsaber, and I want to know what you were doing in the Archives."

"What has your father made you?" the man continued, not even looking at Luke. He doubted he'd even heard him. "My son grew up in the slums of Coruscant, but I'd _never _teach him to become a monster— _agh—_"

Luke could deal with slights about his age. He could handle people underestimating him, disrespecting him, _pitying_ him.

But a slight against his father?

He tightened his grip on the man's throat, feeling the power and the intoxicating anger rush through him. . .

. . .and then he thought of Mara Jade, resolutely, ruthlessly still as his father punished her for telling the truth, and he let go.

Rebel or not, that had always seemed an ugly way to die.

Instead, he just spat, "Then clearly he was a better father than you were."

"Vader _killed_ my son," the man spat back. "My harmless teenage son. If he had the heartlessness to do _that_, as a parent himself, then he's either a monster, a poor excuse for a father, or both." His lips twisted in a feral half-snarl. "My credit's on both—"

Luke knocked him out.

Not with the Force—that was too merciful. He slammed his head against the wall behind him and only vaguely hoped he didn't have any fatal damage.

"If you won't tell me what you were doing in the Archives _now_," he said into the silence, for no one's benefit but his own, "then you'll tell us under interrogation."

Luke had a job to do.

He couldn't get caught up in all these personal vendettas, give into his rage. He needed to protect the Palace and everyone in it.

Including his father.

Luke shook his head and eyed the body.

It would be a long trek up to the surface,

* * *

Leia's ship touched down on the landing pad outside the Imperial Palace, and she was out of the cockpit before the engines even shut off.

She bounced on the balls of her feet as the landing ramp descended. Luke and her father were standing outside ready to greet her; she could sense them. The ramp was moving too slowly—

But then it was down, and she rushed out, breath shooting out of her lungs when someone slammed into her. She buried her head in Luke's shoulder as he lifted her off the ground and spun her around a few times, then brought her back to a halt.

Still, neither of them let go.

There was a pointed cough from Palpatine.

They let go. Leia didn't know why these displays of affection were being frowned upon—it wasn't like there were any troops around to see it—but she was back on Palpatine's goodwill. She didn't want to lose it.

So she just linked arms with her brother instead, enjoying the feeling of _actually being able to sense him in the Force_, and grinned at him. "What happened to your face?"

Luke free hand came up to gingerly touch the _spectacular_ violet bruise across his nose and cheek, and drawled, "I got punched."

"Only once?"

He shot her a look; she threw up her hands. "I'm just saying."

He glanced down, his lips tilted up, but then he gestured with his head towards Vader and Palpatine, and they wordlessly agreed to continue this conversation later.

Vader's hand settled on Leia's shoulder when they drew close enough; she wanted to throw herself at him, hug him, but she had the funny feeling Palpatine might object to that as well.

And, she conveyed to Luke through a nudge over their newly-reactivated bond, they had a few _questions_ they needed to ask him.

"My dear," Palpatine said, calling her attention back to him. He smiled—it was the same smile he'd always used, every twitch of every muscle identical, but it looked. . . sinister to Leia now, in a way it hadn't been before. This was the smile of the man who'd electrocuted her brother, who'd sent her away from her family; how could his warm, grandfatherly act work anymore? "I am glad to see you safe and well."

She reluctantly extricated herself from Luke to give a short—shallower than usual, but not disrespectful—bow. "And I you, Master."

"Ah, but you will have to tell me of all your travels," he continued, placing a hand on her hand to start guiding her inside. She cast a nervous glance at Luke, but he was following dutifully; the slight quirk to his eyebrow made her lips twist upward slightly. "Come into the throne room, all three of you."

He cast a pointed glance at Vader.

"And then we can talk."

* * *

The throne room was empty save for the two Inquisitors standing guard in the corner as they always did. Luke wasn't sure what the point of them was—whether Palpatine made them fight for his own entertainment, enjoyed riling them up and eviscerating them with his careful words, or even just liked to watch his servants serve him—but he recognised one of them as Jade, who watched him from behind her mask. Still and impassive.

He and Leia knelt in front of Palpatine, as they always did, while their father hovered behind them almost protectively. Leia gave her report in succinct, measured bursts—though Luke didn't fail to note how she didn't elaborate on what exactly had happened on her detour to Tatooine.

Palpatine nodded once when she was done. "Good—you have done well in helping to handle the uprising on Naboo. Do you know who was responsible?"

"Yes, Master. I believe Saw Gerrera and his partisans were the instigators."

"Just as they were on Kuat," he observed. "Strange, that Amidala does not seem to have the same taste for anarchy that Gerrera does."

Vader tensed behind him at the Rebel leader's mention, but said nothing.

Palpatine turned his attention on Luke. "You," he said, "have already given me your briefing on your skirmish in the Archives yesterday."

Where was he going with this? "Yes, Master, the Rebel—"

"Hasn't revealed much under interrogation, I am told." Palpatine raised his eyebrows. "Only his name and one word, I believe?"

Luke gritted his teeth. "Yes, Master, the interrogators are still working on him, but—"

"What do you know of this attack so far?"

The question caught him off-guard—Luke had, of course, submitted multiple reports detailing the events during the previous days, _on top of_ the work he was supposed to do in the Archives, but he rattled off, "The Rebel's name is Lacert Visz, he's a native Coruscanti human, fifty standard years old. The datapad he seemed to show an interest in held the blueprints to the central power distribution grid, but we've no idea if that was really his target or just a cover—"

"What has he revealed under interrogation?"

"I worked on him briefly when I could, and he showed familiarity when I mentioned Amidala, which indicates of course that this infiltration _was_ linked to her"—or _them_, if Leia's theory about her was wrong—"unlike the attacks on Kuat and Naboo. However, this is mere conjecture—"

"Was there anything else you found?"

Luke swallowed. "Yes, Master. We got one word out of him: _Eclipse_."

Palpatine cocked his head. "_Eclipse_?"

"Yes."

"Interesting. And you could find no. . . _context_. . . for this?"

"No, Master. Anything we could come up with at this point would be a guess, but mine would be that it's a codeword for whatever operation the Rebels are planning."

"I see." Palpatine pursed his lips, looking thoughtful for a moment. "And you have no idea what that operation might be?"

"None, Master."

"Then I'm tasking you with finding out." Luke exchanged a glance with Leia. "I want the two of you to investigate this further, until you can find some concrete answers. Try to stay on Coruscant, but I understand if this task leads you. . . far astray." Luke had no idea what Palpatine's smile might mean. "I'll assign someone else to the Archives, and to hunt down Amidala."

Glancing at Jade from the corner of his eye, Luke saw an opportunity, and took it. "Master?"

"Yes, Luke?"

He lifted his chin to look Palpatine in the eye. "If I may make a suggestion as to who should pursue Amidala in Leia's place? I believe Admiral Thrawn would be a suitable choice."

Jade hid her shock well, but he was looking for it, so he felt it.

"Thrawn?" Palpatine sat forward, intrigued. "Why him?"

"He's demonstrated an unparalleled ability to think outside the box, and I respect him immensely for that. Chasing the Rebellion is like chasing shadows. And while no one may have the creativity to catch shadows, I believe that Thrawn would be the most likely candidate to think of a way." He didn't back down from Palpatine's questioning probe; he just said flatly, "I am certain he would rise to the task."

Palpatine was silent for several long moments.

"I will think about it," he said.

When Luke was dismissed from the room a little while later, he didn't so much as glance at Jade. But he felt her gaze burning a hole in his back nevertheless.


	11. Shatterpoint Two

The moment they arrived back at the apartment, Leia let go of everything she wanted to ask.

"Were Luke and I raised on Tatooine?"

Luke stared at her. Vader stared at her. Leia didn't care.

She was tired from the journey; Luke and Palpatine's strange conversation had given her a headache to comprehend; her curiosity was eating her alive. She didn't have the patience to tiptoe around this. She wanted _answers_.

Her father still didn't say anything.

Luke flopped onto the sofa and buried his face in a pillow, no doubt in an attempt to hide from the fireworks about to go off. Leia just planted her hands on her hips and stared at Vader, his hulking figure backlit by Coruscant's jewel-bright twilight skyline.

"Well?" she pushed, self-righteous in her indignation, forceful in her _need to know_. "Were we?"

A breath hissed out of Vader's respirator. "Your report did not cover everything you did on that disgusting planet, did it?"

"Evidently not. Now stop avoiding the question."

Vader was silent for several long moments. With every rasping breath he took, Leia felt the tension build, and build, and build—

"Yes," Vader ground out. "I told you before that had Palpatine not lied to me about your mother's death, I would have found you all the sooner. That is true. I believed you dead, because. . . He told me I had killed her while she was pregnant. And the child too—we hadn't known we'd be having twins."

"How could you have _not known_—"

"Because the relationship was a secret," Luke said. Leia glanced over at him—he'd detached his face from the pillow and was watching their father through narrowed eyes. "They never went to a doctor because the relationship was a secret. _Right_, Father? Jedi weren't allowed to marry senators."

Luke voice was more cutting than Leia had ever heard it; Vader jerked back as if he'd been shot. "_What_? Where did you—"

"Are you or are you not Anakin Skywalker? And was she or was she not Padmé Amidala?"

Vader stared at him. Leia stared as well: he hadn't told her that. They'd probably been interrupted too early.

"Yes," Vader said finally, head bowed. "She was."

"_What_?" Leia shot to her feet. "Our mother is a _Rebel_—"

"Your mother is _dead_—that terrorist defiles her name with every action they take—"

"—and you didn't think it _pertinent_ to _tell me that_ before I was _sent to hunt her down_—"

"Father," Luke snapped, "why were we on Tatooine?"

Leia forced herself to calm down. Tatooine. Right. They could argue about her father's actions when they finally knew what, exactly, those actions had _been_.

"Yes," she added her dissent. "Tell us."

She could tell that Vader wanted to avoid the question again. His hands were clasped behind his back, his shoulders half-turned towards the twilight of the cityscape. But his mask faced Luke, and his head was completely still.

Leia glanced at her brother. He'd pushed himself up to sit on the sofa, his fists clenched on his knees, his back arched and gaze riveted to the floor.

She reached out to him and was batted away.

She pursed her lips, but Luke just lifted his head slowly to glare at their father.

Perhaps it was the glare that did it. Luke was the most affectionate of them all, on top of his hero worship; the idea of him _glaring_ at Vader was completely alien. But here he was.

In lying about something so major, for so long, Vader might have caused damage he couldn't easily undo.

After a moment's hesitation, he started talking.

"Shortly after I turned to the dark side, your mother came to meet me on Mustafar. We. . . quarrelled, and. . . I was new to the Sith," he argued, "and you know how it feels, it's difficult to control—"

No one interrupted him; he interrupted himself. Luke had gone back to staring at his knees, completely closed off.

"I choked her," Vader said finally. "I was so angry I choked my heavily pregnant wife into unconsciousness. After that, I duelled with the Jedi Kenobi—he'd stowed away on her ship, I'd believed she'd betrayed me, that was what triggered my reaction—" He swallowed. " I duelled him. He cut off my three remaining limbs and left me to burn on Mustafar. Palpatine saved me," he gestured to his suit, "and put me in _this_.

"And when I woke up. . . Palpatine was there. I asked where Padmé was, if she was safe, and he said— he said that I had killed her. It was a logical conclusion to draw that I had therefore killed the two of you as well. But Palpatine had lied.

"I believed that lie for seven years."

"And what happened then?" Leia scoffed. "You just. . . dropped by Tatooine for a visit?"

"I was hunting Obi-Wan Kenobi. I wanted revenge on everything he'd done to me."

Leia folded her arms across her chest. The anger inside her was just as surprising to her as to her father; she hadn't been this angry when she first learned the truth, she'd just been. . . confused. But standing here now, having the full truth of it sink in, having her father _try to defend himself—_

No wonder Luke was so closed off.

"I'd heard rumours about a Jedi supposedly living in the Jundland Wastes. Even if it wasn't Kenobi, I wanted to kill something. And yet when I flew through the desert and paused to investigate a strange mirage in the Force"—_mirage_; there was that word again—_"_I was greeted by a little boy."

Luke lifted his head to look his father in the eye.

Vader said softly, "I knew who you were the moment I laid eyes on you."

A flicker of emotion crossed her brother's face, but it was too quick to identify and she still couldn't get a read on him. They were both too shut off.

They needed to have a long, in-depth chat after this.

"So you took us, and put blocks in our memories?" Leia prompted, tone flat. She raised an eyebrow at her father. It was strange seeing such a massive man fidget, but that was exactly what he did.

". . .yes," he said. "You were staying with Owen Lars, my _stepbrother_ from my mother's marriage. I'd met him only once before, and there certainly wasn't enough goodwill between us to spare his life—nor that of his wife. They'd kidnapped you.

"And when Kenobi sensed their deaths, and understood what was happening, he came to face me and kidnap you again." His voice was dark, almost savage, when he said, "I killed him before he even came _near_ you."

A muscle twitched in Luke's jaw.

"And then I took you back to Mustafar, and told Palpatine of your existence. He let me keep you, train you."

"And you put a block in our memories?" Leia pushed. It was the only thing that made sense—she remembered none of this, and she was pretty sure she should, by age seven.

Vader ground out, "Yes."

"Take it out."

They both turned to Luke, startled. His eyes were narrowed even further, fixed on Vader's mask.

"Take it out," he challenged. "They're _my_ memories—I want them back."

Her father seemed hesitant. "Now?"

"Now." Luke tilted his chin up. "You neglected to mention that our mother was Padmé Amidala; we had to work that out on our own. You neglected to mention that we were raised on Tatooine; we had to work _that_ out on our own. _And_ you neglected to even give us our _names_—"

"Skywalker is _weak_, and _dead_, and you should take _no pride_ in carrying something associated with him—"

"Is there anything else you're hiding from us?" There was an edge to his voice; it worried Leia. "Any other lies you wish to tell? If so, feel free to leave the block in." A bitter smile. "I'm sure it would make things easier for you."

Vader took a small step forward, uncertainty in every line of his posture. "Luke. . ."

"_Do it_." His voice cracked slightly; he glanced away, eyes glistening. "Just. . . please, do it."

It was the tears that pushed Vader over the line; Leia was sure of it. Within a few strides he was kneeling in front of Luke and placing a hand on his forehead.

"Here," he murmured.

It was odd watching it as an outsider. Leia knew the sort of fine, delicate work needed to both erect and deconstruct mental blocks, the finesse and skill. It was sometimes even a challenge just getting past a person's shields with minimal damage; even in a trained Force-sensitive who could lower the instinctive barriers by will, it required an enormous amount of deep-seated, intrinsic trust.

Luke trusted Vader intrinsically. At least, he had.

After this. . . maybe not.

They sat there for a long while, Luke's eyes closed and forehead slightly creased.

She spotted it the moment the block collapsed: Luke's eyes flew open and he gasped, clutching at his head. Vader drew back and watched him react, as impassive as ever.

Luke flinched, holding the bridge of his nose gently. Leia reached out to him—

_—SEARING SUNLIGHT, LUKE LEIA LUKE DO YOU WANT TO PLAY WITH ME ONE DAY I'M GONNA THREAD THE NEEDLE BEGGAR'S CANYON LUKE COME INSIDE IT'S GETTING DARK MAKE SURE YOU DO YOUR CHORES PAY ATTENTION YOU'RE TOO MUCH LIKE YOUR FATHER LEIA SIT UP STRAIGHT LET ME SHOW YOU HOW TO MAKE THAT MODEL WOULD YOU LIKE TO LEARN HOW I MAKE BLUE MILK PUDDING YOU CAN WASTE TIME WHEN YOUR CHORES ARE DONE YOU TWO NEED TO MAKE FRIENDS BEYOND BIGGS YOU CAN'T SPEND YOUR LIVES TOGETHER YOU HAVE TO GROW UP SOMEDAY—_

—and drew back just as hastily, head ringing from the onslaught.

Luke threw himself to his feet and fled the room. Vader watched him go, not rising from his kneeling position.

"Let him learn to deal with it on his own," he said in response to Leia's instinct to run after her brother. She wanted to know what was going on—what had their life been _like_—but she didn't want that chaos inside her head.

Vader turned the mask towards her. She sensed regret in him. "Would you like the block removed as well?"

She nodded—once, then more vehemently.

Because, chaos or not, Luke was right. Without those memories—even _with _them—they had no idea if their father was lying to them about anything else. And while there were some secrets which he certainly _should_ be keeping. . . there were others which he certainly _shouldn't_.

"Do it."

* * *

Luke didn't know how long he'd lain in bed, staring at the ceiling, and dived into the depths of colour, sound, smell, touch, taste that had previously existed only in his nightmares.

He understood now—and he wasn't sure he wanted to.

Vader's reticence to talk about their mother.

That strange mirage that shimmered every time he tried to remember anything from before.

And those nightmares, those recurrent, endless nightmares, of desert dunes sloping away from him and the suns bleeding the sky red and a bone-deep cold despite them, despite the metal hand clutched around his, that inescapable feeling of being. . .

. . .kidnapped, confused, afraid, mournful, sadness, like a knife in his chest. . .

Lost.

Being lost.

It made a horrible amount of sense.

He'd thought they were visions. Metaphorical, perhaps—a period in his future where he _would_ be alone, _would_ be afraid and hurting—or just spot on. A future where he had to wander the desert feeling like he'd been simultaneously savaged and sheltered by a feral nexu.

It wasn't the future; it was the past.

The Force telling him what had happened? Or his own memory, his own _power_, rebelling against the lies his father told him over and over?

His name was Luke Skywalker.

He'd lived on Tatooine.

He'd lived with two moisture farmers. Owen and Beru Lars, he remembered. Aunt Beru had drilled it into the both of them mercilessly: if you're ever lost, say _my aunt and uncle are Owen and Beru Lars, they run a moisture farm near Anchorhead. . ._

He couldn't remember their faces. It was all a blur.

It made him cry harder.

Because sudden _emotions_ were welling up in his chest, spilling out; he'd _loved_ them, he and Leia had _loved_ them, they were their _family_. He'd forgotten what it felt like, hadn't felt it in ten years, and now it demanded his attention. It should have run its course by now, years ago.

Instead, it had festered behind hat _blasted mind block—_

A violent resentment surged in his throat his chest; he sucked in his breath. He _hated_ his father for taking this from him. He'd _killed them_.

He _lied_.

He'd stolen their memories, and Luke had unknowingly rewarded him for it by giving him _everything he had_.

He was the father Luke had dreamed about for so long—not a navigator on a spice freighter, after all.

Luke had given him too much credit.

Luke had given him _everything_. And Vader hadn't given anything in return, he'd just. . . taken.

Taken, and taken, and taken.

He didn't know why he was surprised. His father was the Emperor's executioner: he took lives left, right and centre. What were a few memories compared to _that_?

How could he possibly think twice about ripping their lives asunder when he did it to others with such wild abandon?

Why would Luke be any different?

Tears burned behind his eyelids.

He'd wandered outside that day. He shouldn't have wandered outside that day.

But he'd wanted to be there to greet Uncle Owen when he came back from fixing the 'vaporators; Leia had broken his T-16 model and he'd wanted to get away from their quarrel; he'd wanted to watch the sun set over the homestead. . . There were so many reasons.

None of them mattered now.

Because he'd decided to walk up to that strange droid-he-somehow-knew-was-a-man on the speeder and hadn't thought to run when it collapsed to his knees before him and hugged him.

And then, not ten minutes later, the furor, horror, _terror_ that tore through his aunt's face before the lightsaber tore through her body. Someone had screamed—Luke, Leia, both? He couldn't remember.

He couldn't remember, because it had been _ten years_ and _his father hadn't told him_—

Leia had hated Vader instantly. She'd kicked and screamed when he wrapped a hand round her bicep, sobbed when he'd killed Old Ben in front of them as well—they hadn't been all that fond of Old Ben, but they'd _known of_ him, he'd come to _save_ them from the monster—and hadn't quietened until Vader forced her to.

Luke's fist twisted in the pillowcase.

No wonder they were both so desensitised to violence. He and Leia—

Leia.

He threw himself upright.

_Leia_.

Now he dragged himself out of his own thoughts, he could hear her emotions banging on his mind. There wasn't as much despair as there was inside him; Leia never had time for that. Instead there was _anger_, an all-consuming, all-encompassing rage—

There was a crash from the next room over.

Luke was on his feet and out of the room before he even thought. He strode past his father, who had turned from facing the window to look towards Leia, and just said, "Don't." His voice was hard.

Vader didn't.

Luke did. He opened Leia's bedroom door without even knocking and ducked the hairbrush that came flying for his face.

"If you were aiming for Father's mask, you need to work on your aim. He's taller than me."

Leia chucked a comb at him for good measure. "Have you come to tell me to _calm down_?"

He caught it, and tossed it to the side.

"No," he said baldly. "I'm angry too." He summoned her lightsaber from its position on her bedside table and held it out as a peace offering. "I figured we could be angry together."

Leia glared at the saber for a moment, then yanked it out of his hand. "Get ready to be beaten into a pulp."

He snorted. "Don't flatter yourself."

* * *

"_That_"—slash, slash, downward stab—"_utter_ piece of"—a roll, a duck as the red blade whistled over her head, teeth gritting as it sliced away a few burning hairs—"_lying_"—a flash of yellow as they connected, the crash resounding in her ears—"_poodoo_."

"I guess this explains why we took to Huttese so well in languages class."

Her saber soared down over her head, two hands on the hilt, to collide with Luke's again. She yanked it back and brought it down again, _harder_, like a hammer on an anvil. It was cathartic. "How"—_crash_—"are you"—_crash—_"so"—_crash_—"_calm_!"

"Trust me." Luke stepped back and her slash sliced through the air where he had been, hard enough to cleave flesh and bone had they still been there. "I'm not."

"Then why—" She stopped mid-swing, answering her own question with a bitter laugh. "You're _pretending_ for me."

"It makes it easier to hold together."

"You don't need to _pretend_. I remember when you had a complete and utter meltdown because you wet the bed." Slash, hack. "At least, I do _now_."

"Please," Luke scoffed. "We both know I wet the bed _long_ after we arrived on Mustafar."

A laugh ripped out of her at that, no humour to it. She dropped her lightsaber; it clattered away across the floor as she dragged her hands across her face. "That was awful."

She kept laughing anyway.

And sobbing.

She crumpled to the floor.

Luke sank down next to her. He was sobbing too.

For a moment they sat in silence, just looking around the room. After they'd first come to Coruscant, Vader had bought—well, _commandeered_, more like—both the ex-apartment of Padmé Amidala and the one below it, the latter being converted into a massive nexus of training rooms. It had been a place to train when they didn't want to deal with the half hour speeder ride to the Imperial Palace, somewhere the twins could grow accustomed to how noisy and _cramped_ Coruscant felt through the Force, without having to interact with the people who made it that way.

In theory, at least.

Now, Leia had to wonder if he'd just wanted a place to spar so that Palpatine couldn't keep too close a tab on their respective skills.

She was questioning _everything_ now—had been since Vader told them about his coup, had been since she started looking into Padmé _kriffing_ Amidala, who was her _mother, _and now she _couldn't even trust her own memories_, and— and—

And she hated it.

She buried her head in her hands.

Luke's voice was ragged as he said, "What are we going to do?"

"Beat you to a pulp, round two?" she suggested with no humour. A part of her was deadly serious—but the rest of her pointed out that a) she hadn't even beat Luke the first time, and b) he wasn't the person she wanted to be beating up.

He groaned, perhaps sensing both her intentions and their mutual exhaustion, and shifted so he rested his forehead on his knees. "You know full well that if you fight Father, he won't fight back."

"He might defend himself."

"No he won't. He's gone into one of his rare depressing moods, where he just stands there muttering about how he doesn't deserve us and would say thank you if a lightsaber ran him through. I can sense it."

"He _doesn't_ deserve us."

"But do you really want to kill him?"

Leia opened her mouth—then closed it again.

Because the disturbing thing was, when she was at the height of her anger and her hatred. . . she _could_ imagine herself doing that with little to no regret. Her anger was akin to her father's in its magnitude, and the _only person in the galaxy_ who was safe from it was. . . Luke.

No matter how unbelievably furious she was at her brother, she could never hurt him.

At least, not badly. All was fair in sharing bunk beds and stealing leftovers.

"I want to kill Palpatine," she said instead. She didn't know how to explain that to Luke now—she would do it later, when they'd calmed down and could deal with more shocks and fractures to their tight-knit family unit. "He _knew_."

Everything was shattering—and it was her father's mistake.

"Join the bandwagon. Everyone wants to kill Palpatine. Side effect of being the Emperor of the known galaxy." He nudged her with his elbow. "One day, you'll be the one everyone's trying to kill."

"Thanks for the reassurance," she drawled. "Are you gonna be one of those people trying to kill me?"

"Of course not!" He looked jokingly offended by the mere idea, but she knew he was genuine. "I'll be protecting you. I'll always be on your side."

"Even if I defected to the Rebels?"

She didn't know where the words came from—and she was _beyond_ grateful that they came out as a joke, so no one could hear the genuine doubts behind them. She just knew that somewhere between the barrage of new memories and the knowledge that Padmé Amidala was her mother, it had slotted itself into her mind that _she had family who were Rebels_.

It had slotted itself into her mind that she wasn't as vehemently against the idea as she might have been before.

The Alliance were against Palpatine, after all.

In fact, the only problem she had with them at all right now was that they were against her father.

Her father, who had apparently been lying to her for ten years without a hint of remorse.

Luke froze at the insinuation.

She cursed herself. She couldn't hide things like that behind jokes; Luke knew her far, far too well, he'd see through it in a heartbeat and ask questions she couldn't answer—

"If you were to defect to the Rebels," he said slowly, "I'd do my utmost best to understand _why_. Because I know you, I love you, and I trust that if you believe something's the right thing to do, then there's a good chance it is." He lay a hand on her shoulder and squeezed it lightly. "I'm on _your_ side. I don't care which side that is."

She bowed her head slightly. The grin she gave him was radiant. "Likewise."

"_'Likewise'_?" He snorted. "I say all those pretty words and you just say _'likewise'_? I thought _you_ were the orator here."

"I am." She grinned at him. "Good orators know when to shut up."

He laughed softly at that, but he worried at his lower lip a moment later.

"If. . . you _were_ considering leaving the Empire in favour of the Alliance," he said slowly. She sensed him cast his mind out, making sure no one—_least of all_ their father—would walk in on them, checking there was no surveillance. "Do you have any idea what particular motives you might have?"

Leia glanced up at her brother, eyes wide. She recognised what he was doing, and she knew why—and she loved him for it.

More than anything right now, she needed someone to confide in.

"I was doing some research on Amidala," she said slowly, "and. . . a lot of her ideas—the ones from the Clone Wars and before," she added, "_not_ any of the violent guerrilla attacks—seem. . . decent? At least." She took a deep breath. "A lot of what she did and what the Republic did doesn't quite fit in what Palpatine told me about the Old Republic. It sounds. . . better than he made it out to be. I don't know." She rubbed her arm, glancing at her lightsaber, lying innocuously on the floor. "Less fear."

"I know what you mean," Luke said. And he _meant_ it, which lifted the weight of _worlds_ off of Leia's shoulders. She wasn't the only one who'd been having doubts. "I've been thinking about how the Empire is run, what it means, and. . . I think Father's too harsh. On his troops, the Inquisitors—"

"The Inquisitors deserve it."

"Do they, though?" Luke pushed. "Why?"

Leia tried to find something to say, but came up blank. "I just. . ." _Don't like them_. That was a pathetic reason, and she knew it.

Luke shrugged. "Think about it. If Father hadn't _found_ us," he said the word with disdain, "and Palpatine had instead. . . would that be us?"

"If Palpatine had found us, the outcome would've been the same. He'd have given us to Father—"

"Would he?" She could tell by his tone that Luke was just wondering aloud. "Or would he have kept us in the Inquisitorius, kept us _loyal_, and not told Father until he needed to use us as leverage?"

"I. . ." She hadn't thought about that before. It was clear Luke hadn't, either; they exchanged horrified glances.

Because they _knew_ which one it would've been.

"But I think the entire Empire is too cruel in its punishments," Luke continued softly. "You heard what Palpatine said—mercy fosters loyalty. And yet he never practices that tenet—not in any meaningful way. I think that if the galaxy is built on the people. . ."

". . .then keeping the people happy should be our priority," she finished. "I. . . can see where you're coming from."

He smiled softly. "Yeah, well." He glanced down at his lap. "It's just an idea."

She leaned her head against his shoulder. She was _tired_, all of a sudden—her world had been shattered and reforged in the span of a few hours, and she wasn't sure how to feel about any of it.

But her brother was here. She was here. And, although she might be angry at him at the moment, her father was here as well.

Everything would be alright.

She closed her eyes. "It's just an idea," she echoed, murmuring, and desperately tried to ignore the unspoken words that hung on the air:

_For now._


	12. Dance of Denial

The next morning dawned bright and early, and for the first time in weeks Luke had slept without dreams.

He pulled himself out of bed with a groan, wondering idly why his head and body were aching so badly—then the previous afternoon hit him like a speeder.

Leia had indeed beat him into a pulp, and only partly because he'd let her. And because his brain was probably still adjusting to these new memories of his, of course.

Except they weren't _new_, were they?

Luke closed his eyes, wincing.

His father had stolen their memories and lied about it for ten years.

The thought still sent a pang through his chest.

He took in a deep breath and expelled it slowly. Then he opened his eyes again.

He could dwell on it later—and he had no doubt he _would_—but if he examined his feelings too closely _now_, early in the morning when everything was fresh and raw, he'd drive himself insane. He needed to stay positive for the time being—mostly to stop his father from knowing exactly how deeply that had cut him, but also because Leia needed him to.

Grabbing his datapad from the bedside table as he headed to make himself some breakfast was such an instinctive motion that it took him a moment to process what he was seeing when he turned it on. Usually he knew exactly what assignment he was to carry out for the day, and reaching for his datapad was just a way to refresh his memory of the details; now, he realised he couldn't remember what Palpatine had ordered him to _do_ in lieu of working in the Archives again.

He'd had other things to think about last night.

The messages proudly displayed at the top of the screen reminded him.

Palpatine's aides had forwarded everything to him. The transcript of what the Rebel—Visz, his name had been, but the word _REBEL_ was the most prominent thing in the document's title—had confessed, exactly; a list of every Rebel code they knew of to date; the contact details of each Imperial intelligence operative to look to for context or information; a message saying that the very datapad Visz had tried to steal was available at the Palace upon his request; and everything else he could possible need or want for any investigation.

Eclipse.

It was a nice word, for a pretty thing—Luke had seen quite a few in his lifetime, some with multiple satellites and some with multiple suns. It was a perk of travelling, as well as being able to _choose_ where he travelled. But he doubted those thoughts would help, so he pushed them away.

Eclipse.

It had celestial imagery going for it as well. The darkness blotting out the light, if only momentarily; the corona and colours left behind when it did. He idly wondered if it might mean something, but dismissed the notion pretty quickly. The Rebels were too practical to choose a codeword for which the meaning could be derived _from the word itself_, and chasing after it would be a waste of time.

He emerged into the main room to see Leia curled up in a armchair, toes tucked under her with her knees against the arm, a datapad identical to Luke's cradled in her lap. She glanced up at him when he came through; she looked exhausted.

"Great. You're awake."

He sat down opposite her. "You look awful."

"Thanks for being sensitive about it."

"I meant—" He shook his head. "You know what I meant."

A moment of silence, then she offered, "I didn't sleep well."

"Understandable." He was surprised he _had_ slept well—but then he supposed he'd worn himself out with all the emotion and sparring yesterday, and his body had _forced_ him to rest.

Leia was watching him nervously, and it suddenly hit him what they'd said in the training room. She said, "Look, Luke, about that whole defection thing—"

"You don't have to explain yourself. " He cast his senses out to check his father wasn't in the apartment; he saw Leia confirm it with a nod. "I told you, I've been having my doubts as well. It doesn't make us bad; no government's perfect. And with Father's coup, maybe we can change that." The last words sounded hollow, but he didn't want to think about that.

Leia, however, wasn't going to let _that_ part of his misgivings rest. "Not if Father's a part of the problem."

He winced. "Yeah, well. . . maybe we can reason with him. besides, you _know_ he doesn't want to rule himself. Once you're Empress, he technically can't oppose you."

"_Technically_."

"Can we not talk about this right now?" He shifted where he sat, antsy. He'd managed to crush all of these misgivings the previous night, lost in the blur of counter, parry and strike. He wanted them to resurface on _his_ terms, when _he _wanted them to. And if that just happened to be never, then. . .

"He lied to us, Luke."

"He's our _father_." _I don't want him to be our enemy._

She met his eye levelly for a few moments, and they realised something at the precise same moment: Neither was going to back down on this.

There was no point in pushing.

"So, what about this assignment, huh?" Leia turned her attention back to her datapad. "Have you read all the documents attached to it?"

"I literally just woke up."

"That's a no, then." She grinned wickedly at him, and the awkwardness was past. "Such a slacker."

"I'll read them now," he grumbled, and switched on his datapad.

It didn't take too long: despite the abundance of possible resources, the actual information they had to go off was. . . pathetic.

"Eclipse", the datapad involved—_which might not even be the datapad they wanted—_and the Rebel's name and home planet.

_But_, they'd also found on Visz's person a datachip he'd already downloaded the contents of several pads onto. Once the slicers got into it, they'd at least know what he was after.

All in all, he was finished relatively quickly.

"Any ideas?" Leia asked as he lowered the datapad.

"Nope," he said, as much as he was loathe to admit it.

But she didn't tease him—for once. She just frowned and nodded grimly. "Alright. I'll head to the Palace and pick up the datapad and chip; we can have a look at what's on there before we start discussing ideas."

"I'll come with you," he said, already rising from his seat.

"No." He must have looked taken aback—even hurt—because she winced, but tried to play it off as, "Wearing _those_ clothes?"

Glancing down at his pyjamas, patterned with cartoons of various wildlife from around the galaxy, he crossed his arms over the big nerf on his front. "I'll be changed in a minute."

"Will you be _composed_ in a minute?" she asked—almost snapped, really, but he understood she was just slightly on edge. "Because after yesterday, I _don't think_ we want Palpatine looking too deeply into what happened or what we know, and we both know what happened to you the last time Father revealed something shocking."

He cringed back at the memory of the Velts, of the lightning, of Leia's face contorted in fury. _This is not justice_.

His sister's face softened. "I'm sorry," she said softly, "that was uncalled for. But I don't think you'll be able to act like everything's fine."

"And you?"

She gave a bitter smile. "I'm a politician. I was trained by the best."

He took a deep breath. "Alright." To his own surprise, he stepped forward to hug her—and was surprised when she hugged him back, resting her head against the nerf on his chest. "I'll see you in an hour."

"You'd better be changed by then," she commented, smirking at his pyjamas again.

"I will be!"

* * *

Despite her words of bravado to Luke, Leia didn't want to spend too much time in the Palace. She didn't trust herself not to give anything away when under close scrutiny.

Nevertheless, she found upon requesting the evidence from Palace staff, that she had to report directly to Palpatine to get it.

It was petty, beneath him, to do so. But she had a suspicion why he did.

She and Luke hadn't exactly been _subtle _in their emotional turmoil the previous day. There was a good chance Palpatine had sensed it.

She suppressed a grimace. She didn't have the patience—or the mental capacity—to deal with his manipulations right now.

But she had to. So she strode into the throne room and knelt, clipping out her request before he could get a word in edgewise.

Palpatine was silent for a moment, staring down at her kneeling form.

When he spoke, it wasn't to address her request.

"I sensed a great disturbance in the Force last night," he said instead. "Did you. . . also, sense something?" She was silent, and he pushed, a dangerous edge to his voice, "I believe you and your family may be at the heart of it."

"We were, Master," she said. He'd know if she lied, and with their burgeoning coup—which she was sure would go ahead despite this. . . hiccup—on the horizon, she didn't want to arouse more suspicion than necessary. "A minor argument between us, there's some lingering resentment"—not, exactly, a lie—"but I'm sure it'll fade with time."

"I see," Palpatine said. "And, do you remember what I said to you a few weeks ago? About my visions of your father getting. . . hurt?"

Leia swallowed, glad that the angle of her position meant he couldn't see her expression. "I remember, Master."

_He knew._

He knew about the coup, somehow. He had to—come to think of it, hadn't Vader said that he'd had spies on the _Devastator_? There was no way he didn't know.

Especially with this line of enquiry. . .

"I've been meaning to ask if you've had any insight into why that might be?"

She couldn't _lie. N_ot outright, at least. There was the risk he'd be able to tell, and while she may do nothing more than amuse him, she didn't want to lose the privileged position she had as one of his confidants—as his _successor_.

No matter what she said, it had to leave him with the idea that if events played out in his favour—if he _ensured_ they played out in his favour—she could still be his, mind, body and spirit.

What had her father described the Inquisitors as? _Palpatine's creatures._

If he didn't believe she was one as well, he'd stop trying to win them back. He'd stop pretending to be kind, and he'd go straight for the throat.

"My father has always been reckless, Master," she said, making sure to advertise potential split loyalties in that comment alone—her father, or her master? "Especially with himself. I feel he's growing more and more disillusioned with the brutality and manipulations Imperial Court"—_and its leader_—"and may do rash something about it."

"Rash." He rolled the word around his mouth, familiar with it. It was what he'd used to describe him, weeks ago now. "I understand. But can you just clarify for me," he pushed, "what you mean by _brutality_?"

_Force,_ she hated him doing that.

She hated him nitpicking her turns of phrase during their lessons, and _she hated it now_.

But she had learned well.

She lifted her chin and met his eye stoically, face impassive, as she said, "You know the court, Master. They'll betray anyone to stay in power." She tilted her head; her braids shifted with the movement. "Or keep it."

Palpatine laughed. He sounded genuinely delighted.

"My dear," he said, rising from his seat and approaching. She rose to her feet, taking a respectful step back, but he placed a gnarled hand on her shoulder. She forced herself to meet his eye. "It's always a pleasure talking with you. Here." He handed over a sealed, translucent bag; she could see the shape of a datapad and chip inside it. "Take it—I've kept you long enough, and you and your brother should get started soon. I'd hate to keep you from the investigation."

She took the bag almost a little too eagerly, then remembered herself and let her hand fall to her side once she held it. She heard it rustle as she bowed.

"Thank you, Master," she said, then turned to leave.

"And, Leia." Palpatine's voice stalled her in her place. For a moment she stared at the doors longingly, the red guards on either side, then turned back to face him. His face was shadowed by his hood; all she could make out were the sickly glow of his eyes and the yellowing slash of his grin. "If your father _does _happen to have any. . . bad ideas, you'll be sure to report them to me, won't you? I assure you I'll be most grateful."

For a moment she almost gaped.

Was— was he _bribing_ her?

Did he think he had enough of a hold on her that once the dice fell where they must, she'd side with him over her father?

He had to.

That had been the entire point of her act, wasn't it?

_Your arrogance is your weakness, _she thought, staring at him, but had the tact not to say it aloud.

Instead, she bowed.

"Of course, Master," she said. "It would be my honour."

"Good." He smiled. Then, because he no doubt wanted to test his new spy— "You and Luke. . . you mean so much to him, you know? He'd never, ever lie to you." Her heart flopped uncomfortably in her chest at _that_ choice of words—_how much did he know about last night_—but then he said, "You're his twin suns. I don't know what he'd do without you."

For a moment, she stood frozen.

Palpatine inclined his head. "Dismissed."

She whirled around on autopilot and marched out of the room, but her mind was running faster than the speed of light.

* * *

Luke felt his concern mount and mount the longer Leia kept talking.

"_Twin suns_?" he asked when she was finished. "Does he know about— about Tatooine?"

"I have no idea. I _really_ hope not."

"Big surprise there," he snorted. He shifted on the sofa, accidentally knocking knees with his sister. "But do you have the datapad?"

Instead of answering, Leia just held it out to him.

He took it, and turned it on. The information scrolling across the top informed him that the contents of this pad included highly detailed blueprints of the layouts of several major Imperial facilities: their entrances and exits, their staff details, their role to be served in society—

"Kriff," Luke said.

"What is it?"

Wordlessly, he handed her the datapad.

Her eyes blew wide, and he knew why. If that sort of information got into Rebel hands. . . "Shouldn't this have an access code? Why did security not—"

"Visz disabled it, according to the slicers' debrief," Luke recalled from one of the reports he'd been sent. "That was how he got in. He had a code on the datachip as well. Apparently that was difficult to crack, it took them a while, but they did it."

Leia shrugged, and reached for a datareader, making sure to check there was nothing important on there—they didn't want any nasty surprises from a Rebel's chip. "Well, let's see what he had any interest in taking away with him, then."

They peered at the datareader's screen; after a moment, text began to scroll across it and the document was opened up.

"He didn't get much," Luke murmured.

She threw him a grin. "Yeah. Why didn't you wait until he had more info to catch him?"

"I was a bit concerned with the inherent security risk in letting him get _away_ with it, at the time," he grumbled. "But look at what we _do_ have. The architectural and engineering plans for the standard Star Destroyer, the _Executor_—"

"Shouldn't the Rebels already have _both_ of those?"

"The Velts were working for Gerrera, not Amidala," Luke corrected. "Intel suggests there's very little amicable communication between those two anymore. But if you would let me _finish_. . ."

"Sorry, sorry." She smiled sweetly at him. "Read on."

He rolled his eyes. "The plans for the archives facility on Scarif, as well as the communications' facility; map of Skystrike Academy; and. . ." He frowned, then glanced up, concerned. "The blueprints to the central power distribution grid on Coruscant."

Leia met his gaze. "And?"

"If the Rebels managed to stage an attack on _that_. . . The whole planet could go down."

"The Palace has a separate system, against such threats," she reminded him.

"The Palace won't be worth anything if they take the rest of the planet," he shot back. "What if they seized control everywhere but here? Even if the Palace defences somehow never failed _once_ in all that time, they could lay siege to the building and we'd never hold out for more than a year at most."

"You think they'd do that?" she asked him, but she seemed. . . distracted. . . suddenly.

He frowned. "You think they _wouldn't_?"

Leia swallowed.

* * *

"I've been doing some research on Padmé Amidala," she admitted, "and from what I've seen, she isn't one to claim that the ends justify the means."

"And?" Luke shrugged. "That's _Padmé _Amidala, our _mother_. Amidala is just someone using her good name to gain support—you only have one theory to prove otherwise."

"You don't believe that."

He let out a breath, and she knew she'd got him. "No," he admitted, "I don't. But there's no logic to it, it's—"

"A feeling?"

His lips twisted. "A shadow of a feeling, more like. A mirage."

"That's enough for me." She leaned forwards. "Padmé Amidala _is_ Amidala, who _is_ our mother. And she _does not_ seem like a warmonger."

"That was twenty years ago."

"_Think about it_," she pressed. If Luke didn't believe her, she knew, no one would. "When has she ever committed an act of unforgivable, _intentional_ violence?"

Luke stared at her. "Have you forgotten Kuat?"

"_That was Saw Gerrera._ You said so yourself—_and_ you said yourself that they're not working together anymore. Now," she said, pointing her finger at his chest, "name me _one_ incident of extreme violence in the last fifteen years that can _only_ be placed on her shoulders."

He still looked unconvinced. "There's quite a few."

"Then name them."

He sighed, but began, "Onderon—"

"She was still working with Gerrera. That was _literally his home planet_, he just called for assistance and her cell showed up." It was the first time they'd heard her name, a little over five years ago now.

"Sullust—"

"We had a blockade around the planet and they were trying to get through it to deliver supplies to the Sullustans."

"Because they were _traitors_! They'd helped the Rebellion, and the massacre there meant Father was temporarily _demoted_, remember?"

"_Temporarily_," she snapped. "And then there's Tureen VII—"

"That was exactly the same!"

"Which is my point! The Rebels were there to _save_ lives, not _end_ them! It's the Partisans that end them." There was a beat, then Leia dredged up from within herself the gall to say, "And the Empire, too."

Luke's confusion had turned to horror, now. "You're sounding like a Rebel sympathiser," he whispered. "Are you taking _their_ side? After everything—"

"_Everything_ is subjective. That was this entire argument. What have they even _done_ that's so horrible? Dared defy the omnipotent Palpatine? Isn't that what we're doing?" He opened his mouth, then closed it again. Before he could find what he wanted to say, she rushed on, "I'm not taking anyone's _side_, Luke. I'm just looking at the facts—and the hypocrisy. Is rebelling suddenly alright when we're the ones doing it?"

She _knew_ he understood that, _knew_ he believed her, but she knew just as intrinsically that he didn't _want_ to believe her. "Father—"

"Is a lying load of shavit. We've established this—"

"_Don't_ talk about him like that."

"What? Like he's a flawed human being who's acted like an _idiot_ and betrayed our trust?" she bit back. "He is, and he _has_. You know it too. You were furious at him—even now you don't believe what you're saying about him."

"I love him. He's our father."

"Love isn't morality."

"Then what is?" Luke argued. "He's a _great man_."

"Do you think Amidala is a great woman?"

Her unexpected question caught him off-guard. He just frowned faintly, struck dumb.

"Because," she pressed, "if you compare the statistics for who's killed more people—"

"Don't." Luke stood up abruptly, half turning away from her. She opened her mouth to push further, but then a word slipped through his shields, screaming loud enough to sear a trail through her mind.

_Executioner_.

She decided, out of respect for her brother and his emotional stability, not to ask.

Instead, her tone softened. "Do you think _I_ liked this? I gave my _life_ to Palpatine: my trust, my ambitions, my _servitude and power_." She said the word with disgust. "And then Father tells me he stuck a transmitter in his suit and was complicit in the theft of my memories, to make me more compliant." Her lip curled. "My mentor failed me, and your idolised mentor has failed you as well—you just don't want to see it."

"Of _course_ I see it, Leia," Luke ground out. He was still facing away from her, his hands folded behind his back with neat military precision, his back tense. "Forgive me if I'd like to purge last night from my memory."

He turned his head to look her in the eye. "But this wasn't just brought on by last night, was it?"

She rose to her feet, and to the challenge. "I told you. I've been researching Padmé Amidala, and I've come to some conclusions."

"Which are?"

She hesitated. She couldn't say she even knew herself.

". . .the Empire is flawed," she said finally—and weakly. If _Rebels_ were being less brutal than them, then—

Luke scoffed. She wondered if he heard what she really meant in the words, even though she didn't know herself. It wouldn't be the first time.

"And what, exactly"—he paused halfway, eyes widening, as if it suddenly hit him exactly what he might hear if she answered the way he no doubt expected her to—"are you planning to do about it?"

She opened her mouth and took a step forward—

Only for the comm on the table in the corner to chime.

There was only one person who would contact them on _that_ comm—only one person who preferred to have his image projected in massive before the recipients, despising the small handheld comms they carried—so the machine instantly patched him through. Luke and Leia barely had a second to get down on their knees before the Emperor's glorious visage hung in midair in front of them.

"Master," Leia greeted, trying to hide her shock and irritation behind clenched teeth, "what is thy bidding?" The greeting had always seemed a little archaic in her eyes, but Palpatine seemed to like it—

Palpatine barely cast her a glance. Despite her newfound bottomless chasm of hatred for him, the dismissal still stung. "Nothing of any concern to you, child. If it had been, I would have informed you when we were speaking just over an hour ago, wouldn't I?"

Leia recognised the rhetorical question for what it was, and didn't respond.

"Luke," Palpatine said, turning his eyes on him. Leia tensed at the brutal appraising regard he treated her brother with; it felt like he was both revelling in the power he controlled and threatening to undermine it simultaneously. "I trust you and your sister have read the datapad I gave her?"

Luke's head, if possible, bowed lower. "Yes, Master."

"Then you know the Rebels have shown an interest in Skystrike Academy."

Luke was trembling slightly, Leia realised. It pushed all the air out of her lungs and sent a heady mix of anger and shame boiling in her stomach. She hadn't realised her brother was that affected by what she'd said.

But his voice betrayed none of that. "We do, Master."

"Good. The ISB have received word from an operative that there are cadets at the Academy looking to defect—_and_ that the Rebellion will be sending in agents to get them out. The ISB will launch their own investigation and send uniformed officers to root out the traitors, but it is my belief that a more. . . subtle. . . approach is needed."

Neither Luke nor Leia said anything. They both knew Palpatine would divulge whatever he wanted Luke to do when he was good and ready.

After a moment of silence, he did.

"You are one of the only human Imperial operatives of the correct age to be a cadet." Leia didn't miss the implication in _one of_—there were others, and they were not necessarily indispensible to him. She understood that now. "I want you to attend the Academy and find the traitors from the inside." He tilted his head, glancing at Leia then for the first time in a while—almost like he could feel her disquiet.

Luke? Go to _Skystrike_? That was parsecs away. Naboo and Tatooine had been bad enough; she didn't want to go through that again. She turned to her brother, willing him to refuse, or even _haggle_—

"Very well," Luke said. His fists clenched at his sides. "I'll go."

The Emperor smiled, and shot Leia a second look in as many minutes. "Good," he said. "Further details will be sent to you later today."

The holo winked out.

Leia whirled on Luke and spat, "You know, you can avoid me _without_ fleeing to the other side of the galaxy."

"I'm not _avoiding_ you."

"No. You just agreed to his request unthinkingly because you wanted to escape what I had to say—"

"_Leia_," he said.

She shut up.

"Just. . ." He swallowed, heaving himself up to sit on the sofa again. "I need to think about. . . everything, alright?"

She looked at her brother, at his earnest blue eyes, his pained expression. His hands were clasped together in front of him, his shoulders bowed over.

She sighed. "Alright."

He gave her a watery smile.

"I'll continue with the investigation here," she went on. "See if I can figure out what 'eclipse' means. But when you get back, we're having an in-depth heart-to-heart about all of this."

He raised his eyebrows. "I can't wait."

She smacked him on the shoulder.

* * *

Luke left early the next morning, in a non-Imperial shuttle due to take him to Corellia, where he'd get on the standard Imperial shuttle meant to take him and the other new cadets to Skystrike.

As the shuttle lifted off, he watched Leia out the viewport, and tried to crush the guilt at how relieved he felt.

He had a lot to think about.


	13. Practicality

Luke shifted in his spot next to all the other new pilots heading to Skystrike, staring out the window as they approached the station. The system's twin suns appeared a pale blue from space but loomed bright orange through the atmosphere. They reminded him that Tatooine had had twin suns, too. He remembered.

He remember—vaguely—always going out to watch them set. His uncle would go with him, because it wasn't safe for a little boy to be out in the sands alone, and he'd sit on Owen's lap as they sank closer to the horizon, Tatooine's temperatures dropping from uncomfortably hot to uncomfortably cold in the span of a few heartbeats.

Sometimes, Luke remembered, Uncle Owen had told him stories about his grandmother while they watched. He would have to ask his father how many of them had been true.

The shuttle landed, and there was the hiss of the landing ramp descending. Luke and the other cadets rose to their feet carefully, throwing glances at the officer escorting them, then made to march out in a single line when he waved his hand.

Luke let his mind wander as they waited in line for the black astromech next to the flight officer to verify each person's credentials. The Force. . . shimmered here, and he made him uneasy; he tried to peer into the future, see if he could work out the source of the disturbance, but he found nothing. Something was coming, though—something _important_. Important for the galaxy. . . and for him.

_What_ it was, he couldn't tell. But he could tell that much.

The astromech beeped its high-pitched affirmative, and the queue moved forwards.

It continued like that for a while, enough that Luke almost relaxed. This wasn't the first infiltration mission he'd been on; sure, it was his first without Leia, but he could do it, and he would do it well—

The astromech booped a low-pitched negative, and the cadet directly in front of Luke stiffened slightly.

Luke frowned behind his TIE pilot's helmet; strange, he sensed a surge of unusually strong fear from her. . .

"There seems to be a problem with your credentials, cadet," the deck officer said. "Security!"

"Wait!" The cadet held out her hands, her voice panicked. "That— um, that happens from. . . time to time—can I see it?"

Luke's eyes narrowed, and so did the deck officer's, but he handed over the card.

"Yeah, these new ID cards can be temperamental," she said almost conversationally, reaching up to lift her helmet from her head. Luke could tell the deck officer and troopers standing on either side of him were just _itching_ to snap about regulations, but they were tired, and this was taking too long as it was.

The cadet lifted her ID card up to her mouth and _blew_ on it, hard. Luke was just as baffled as the officer for a moment—then she tilted her head to the side so she could rub the card against the shoulder of her uniform, and Luke caught sight of her face.

He wouldn't have recognised her, if he wasn't already half-expecting it.

Their intelligence suggested the cell which would try to get the traitors out was the cell for the Lothal sector, containing Phoenix Squadron and—most pertinently—the _Ghost_ crew. Luke had familiarised himself with all their faces on the trip to Corellia; he recognised her within two heartbeats.

Sabine Wren. Mandalorian, nineteen years old, and an ex-Imperial cadet and weapons specialist for the Rebellion.

_This_ was who would be mounting the rescue mission.

Luke fought to keep his face blank, for all that it was hidden by the mask. It helped keep his thoughts in check as well, though they still whirled at the speed of light.

He briefly considered calling her out there and then, getting her arrested on the spot; the capture of Sabine Wren would demoralise the Spectres and be a significant blow to the Rebellion. But common sense caught up to him just as quickly.

If he did that, called her out here, whatever Rebel sympathisers were here would go to ground. In particular, he'd never gain their trust soon enough to find out how many there were. The same principle applied to the possibility of reporting her later, in the shelter of anonymity: he still needed her to draw them out for him. _Especially _if the ISB were coming to openly investigate while he was here. It would certainly be faster and less complicated than trying to pretend he was a Rebel sympathiser himself; at least coming from her, it would be genuine.

So he'd keep quiet for now. Bide his time. At least when the ISB arrived, Governor Pryce was aware of his placement and would listen to whatever information he had to give her.

Wren handed back her ID card. This time, when the droid received it, it was an affirmative.

The officer handed it back to her. "Proceed."

"Thank you, sir."

Even as he stepped up to hand over his credentials, Luke watched her retreating back.

He still couldn't shake the sense that everything was going to go horribly, horribly wrong.

Or, worse—everything was going to go _right_.

* * *

With Luke gone, Leia was left to investigate on her own. Palpatine had scheduled some sort of briefing with her and her father that afternoon, but she woke up to the dawn light crystallising on her eyelashes, and was too restless to remain in the apartment all day.

So she made up something to do.

The central power grid had been one of the places listed on the datachip, she remembered—it had been Luke's biggest concern. She understood his fears, but military matters weren't her forte; they hadn't been what she was concerned about herself at the time.

Now, though. . . she needed something to do, and that seemed as good a place as any to start.

It was refreshing, taking her speeder out of the small area of Coruscant that their apartment and the Palace were located in. That was where the Senate convened, that was where most of her work was done, that was where she departed from when she needed to get off-world; it was familiar, but repetitive. Walking through the lower levels of Coruscant was a different story—and was often a better way to engage with what the populace actually thought.

She parked the speeder along one of the walkways a little way from the entrance to the maintenance centre and strolled along. Casting her mind out like a net and reeling in the vague sense of people's thoughts and feelings had always worked for her before, and it worked now: it was slow, vague, but there was a deep-seated disgruntlement, desperation. . . dissatisfaction.

Fear. All-encompassing, all-permeating, all-_powerful_.

And most of it seemed to be directed at the Imperial Palace, visible from a large area of Coruscant, shining like a gem levels and levels above.

Oh, not consciously; a lot of it seemed to be just people's general discontentment with life, and resenting the people who _were_ content with it—the sort of people who lived atop those gem-like skyscrapers. But there was, in the adults an awareness that their suffering was the Empire's fault. In one way, or another.

For one brief moment of weakness, she thought about Tsabin, and the comm frequency she'd been given. . .

Leia frowned, and tried to look at this tactfully. _Tactically_, it would be easier to assert control as Empress once their coup happened if these people had some sort of loyalty to the Empire—and, if _loyalty_ and _Empire_ were too much of a stretch, some sort of awareness that supporting her could lead to rewards.

Perhaps she and Luke should look into running some sort of charity scheme; that might do the job.

She shook the thoughts away. That was for after, when she had the galaxy at her feet. She could do whatever she wanted, change whatever she saw fit, when that happened.

The thought nearly made her stop in her tracks. She hissed out a breath.

She could be Empress before the year was out.

She'd been peripherally aware of the possibility her whole life—_well_, some snide part of her reminded her, _what you thought was your whole life_—but it had never seemed real. Palpatine, decrepit as he was, had always had a vitality that it clear that he was _not_ leaving anytime soon. She could train up to it. . . there'd always been _time_ before, someone to measure herself against and keep her in check when her ideas got the better of her. . .

And soon that someone might be gone.

Soon, she'd have no master but herself.

She wasn't sure if the feeling in her chest was ambition or fear. She _was_ afraid—the idea of ruling _an entire galaxy_ was _terrifying_—but there was a small thrill that accompanied it. She couldn't help but revel in the idea of _her_ sitting on that throne, _her_ sitting under that ceiling of stars, _her_ making the calls and changing Palpatine's short-sighted, self-serving policies, ending the war with the Rebellion through treaties _or_ force _or_ the Force, _changing the galaxy for the better_—

And maybe even reducing the fear along the way.

Leia wasn't stupid. She knew Palpatine _enjoyed_ that fear. He and her father drew off of it, became stronger through it. She herself did so during battle, or when she was doing her job. The investigation with Kuat had been rife with it, and she'd _used_ that; it had sharpened her senses, given her clarity, helped her pick apart inconsistencies and irregularities that she wouldn't have noticed otherwise.

If a few people had died because she was. . . overly harsh, while in that state, then so be it. It was a means to an end.

But swamping your entire populace with that sort of fear? Was that _practical_? How were they supposed to develop any sort of patriotism or loyalty if they were constantly kept in poverty to reduce the threat?

And hadn't Luke and Leia been raised in that same poverty, for several years?

The memories Vader had returned to them were fuzzy, as any six-year-old child's no doubt were, but she could remember that. Tatooine was not a rich planet, and moisture farmers were not rich people; had events been _ever so slightly_ different, they'd be in a very different situation right now.

And if they hadn't had the Force, like these people didn't?

Her father would say that it was the will of the Force that they had this power; they were given it to _use_ it. And she would. But either her having the Force was pure biological happenstance from being the daughter of one of the most powerful Force users to ever live, _or_ the Force had actively decided to bring her into existence, as it decided to do all things. And hadn't it also brought these people into existence as well?

Either way, her point remained: it could just as easily be her and her brother in that situation. It _had_ been, for some time.

So Leia wanted to change it. And this coup could and would grant her the power to do so.

"Halt!"

She'd arrived at the central power grid.

The three stormtroopers standing in the entrance levelled their blasters on her, set to stun. Understandable: she hadn't called in her impromptu inspection, and her visage was nowhere near as iconic as her father's death mask. For practical reasons, of course, but still. There was no reason these troopers should know who she was.

"Let us see your authorisation."

That didn't stop her from raising her eyebrows, almost amused at the self-importance in his tone. In truth, she was already plotting how she would make it through this corridor to sabotage the main reactor if she was a Rebel, and one thing was perfectly clear: this place needed _much_ better security.

Three pompous stormtroopers weren't gonna hold back an army of fanatical insurgents.

She lifted her hands very slowly and reached for her pocket holding her authorisation. She _felt_ the immediate tension in the troopers' minds when they spotted the lightsaber now prominent at her hip, then she was switching on the holo and a pale blue rectangle materialised in the air before them.

They blanched at her level of clearance. They almost tripped over themselves to get out of the way.

"Ah—sorry, ma'am," one of them said. _Not_ the original speaker; he seemed to have been struck dumb. "If I may presume to ask, what were you planning on doing here? I can escort you if—"

"That would be useful, Captain," she said coldly, plucking his rank out of his mind—his hoisted blaster blocked his rank plaque. He blanched again. "Especially seeing as I'm here to examine the effectiveness of the security here."

She strode forward, already done with this conversation.

"Of course, ma'am." He hurried to keep up. "If I may show you, the control room is this way—"

* * *

Luke may not _like_ being forced to wake up before 0600, but he wasn't unused to it. Nor were any of the other cadets, clearly; everyone was fully awake within moments of the bell, already bustling to get ready.

They were in the simulator room on the dot. Luke was near the middle of the line as they stood to attention, and Commandant Goran stalked up and down it, inspecting them for some trait Luke didn't know. Goran barely flinched when he looked over him; Luke assumed he wasn't in the small circle of people who knew which cadet was the spy, or even that there _was_ a spy at all.

"Ria Talla," Goran snapped eventually. Wren jerked—that must be her alias. "Darred Antares." That was Luke's. "You're up first. Enter the pods; Captain Skerris will fly as your opponent."

Both of them had their helmets on, but Luke exchanged a brief glance with Wren before climbing the steps into the pods.

He couldn't stop the sigh of relief as he dropped into the pilot's seat. It had been too long since he'd been in the cockpit of a starfighter; while he wasn't actually flying through space or atmosphere like he'd been itching to do for ages, at least he could enjoy this part of the mission.

Especially if they _actually_ got to fly at some point. . .

He watched the screen in front of him light up with a vista of outer space, and let himself be distracted for a moment by the stars he could see, blue and purple and yellow against the blackness—

The comm system let out a squawk. _"This is TIE SS-36, on patrol at point 149, awaiting wingman."_

"Copy that, Three-Six," Luke replied, taking hold of the controls. He wasn't just letting himself drift anymore; he looked at the patrol he'd been ordered to take, and shifted on course with it. "This is TIE SS-23, approaching."

Their orders came through a moment later: _"Comm/scan is tracking Rebel ships entering sector two. Move to intercept."_

"Acknowledged." Then, because he had to build a rapport with the Rebel sympathisers anyway, and it wouldn't hurt to build one with her— "Let's go, Three-Six."

He knew it had worked—at least in part—when she said, _"Right behind you, Two-Three."_

They moved forwards for several minutes, and Luke—despite knowing it wasn't real—felt his nerves ratchet. Space was eerily quiet despite the buzz of the comms, and while he knew it was because sound didn't travel in space _anyway_, that didn't mean it didn't put him on edge.

"You see anything, Three Six?"

_"Hmm, nothing yet," _came the reply. _"Wait—four ships coming in at point eight four seven."_

"Agh, I see them." Luke wrinkled his nose, despite himself. "Y-wings." _Heavy shields, turret guns_; he listed off their assets in his head, but didn't say them aloud. _Sabine Wren_, of all people, should already know them. "Command, how should we proceed?"

_"Eliminate all targets."_

They did.

Ecstatic to finally get to fly something fast, Luke shot off. He made sure to keep an eye on Wren, to be a _good_ wingman, but he ripped into those Y-wings with a fierce abandon, and took pleasure in the orange and yellow explosions that fogged his screen. Wren was a decent pilot herself, she took down quite a few of her own, but he heard slightly nervous laughter over the comm.

_"Wow, you're amazing, Two-Three!"_ A part of her voice sounded unenthusiastic, more dreading—imagine having to pit Phoenix Squadron against him?

He knew his father had personally attacked the _Ghost_ and Phoenix Squadron once, and nearly annihilated them all. He wondered if that was what she thinking of, now.

He hummed his wordless response as another Y-wing exploded, then said, "Good kill, Three-Six."

_"One more and we're even, Two-Three."_ The joking tone was back.

"Not quite."

The last Y-wing exploded into fire and dust, and the crackle of the commandant's voice came over the comms. _"Three-Six and Two-Three, proceed to the transmitted coordinates and destroy the Rebel vessel located there."_

"Yes, sir."

They turned their TIE fighters as one to head to the coordinates that appeared on his display, and Luke frowned as they approached a vessel there. It was a transport, quite large, and smoke was billowing from some of the spots where it'd been hit.

_"Hmm," _Wren said, _"no power readings. . . It's disabled."_

Another comm chimed in then, a recorded message in the simulator but clearly one meant to be taken as the actual truth for this circumstance: _"We surrender! Please, do not fire. We surrender! We are heavily damaged and have wounded aboard. Repeat: _We surrender_!"_

Luke nodded. Alright—he knew how Imperial protocol went, they just had to keep it there, shoot if it made any last ditch attempts at escape, and wait for a boarding party—

_"Destroy the vessel as ordered."_

Luke frowned, cutting off even Wren's objections as he said, "But Imperial protocol states that—"

_"Destroy the vessel as ordered, Two-Three!"_

Luke swallowed. "Yes, sir."

_"Is breaking protocol part of the test?" _he heard Wren mutter. Despite himself, he winced; for a Rebel infiltrator, she was _not_ being subtle.

_"What was that, Three-Six?" _There was a warning in the commandant's tone.

"Uh, comm malfunction, sir," Luke cut in before she could argue back and blow his _entire_ mission with her petty squabble. "Destroying the vessel now—"

_"Hold on, new target coming in on point one seven."_

Point one seven. . .? Luke tilted his head and his eyes blew wide at the ship barrelling straight for them. He knew that shape: the hexagonal design, the turrets; he'd never seen it in person, but he'd read _plenty_ of reports—

_"Look out!"_

Wren's warning came too late; he'd hesitated too long. The simulated _Ghost_ swept in and blasted both their ships to pieces.

The screen went dark. Luke scowled and slumped back in the seat, furious with himself—he should have seen that coming!—but more furious with the commandant for distracting him.

_"Simulation complete. Cadets, exit your pods."_

The pod turned around him, and he made to climb out, walking down the metal steps propped outside it, slowly and methodically.

He'd just removed his helmet when he heard, "What kind of Rebel ship was that? That was _no_ transport?"

He almost snorted—she knew better than anyone what sort of Rebel ship that was—but they were interrupted by the hiss of the third pod opening, and the rhythmic _thump_ of their opponent descending the steps.

"Ah, but you are wrong, cadet," Skerris said. "That _was_ a transport called the _Ghost_, which has been modified for combat."

Luke flicked his gaze back to Wren, who lifted her chin slightly.

"The Rebels are a desperate group of extremists," Skerris continued, removing his helmet to narrow his eyes at her. "They'll fight with any ship, using any means necessary to undermine our authority. _That_ is why orders must be followed without question. Insubordination like _yours_," he treated Luke to a withering glance at that, as well, "will get you and your wingman _killed_."

Luke didn't necessarily _disagree_.

He knew that orders had to be followed. His father, as much as he'd lied about other things, had taught him that: sometimes if one cog broke or did something wrong, the whole machine ground to a halt.

But that was why the Imperial protocol existed.

There were too many corrupt and incompetent officers in the military. They got there through power and family connections, were only there for power, and they never knew what they were doing. But things still moved more or less smoothly, so long as they had unimportant jobs and followed protocol.

When they gave orders that conflicted with protocol, tragedies happened. When the soldiers under them _questioned_ those orders, sometimes, tragedies were averted. He'd seen it.

If you were going to break the protocol you'd drilled into them from day one, you'd better have a good reason for it. You'd better be expecting questions, if you respected your troops in any way, or wanted them to respect you.

Perhaps they didn't.

Perhaps that was the problem.

But if they had fired on that vessel and destroyed it before a boarding party arrived, what information could they hope to glean? They were fighting to _end_ a war, not prolong it. Killing enemies who begged for mercy should be a last resort, modified transports or no modified transports.

_And yet_, he had to think, _this Empire seems awfully fond of it._

Skerris looked him in the eye. "Understood?"

Luke lowered his gaze, but inside he was burning. "Yes, sir." _Understood, but not _agreed_._

Wren said nothing.

"_Understood_, cadet?"

She lifted her chin further, and looked him dead in the eye. Challenge and belligerence was in every syllable as she ground out, "Yes. Sir."

Skerris nodded once, then he, Goran and the other instructors turned to invite the next pairing up to the pods.

"Wedge Antilles, Biggs Darklighter."

Luke tried not to raise his eyebrows at that last name—wasn't that the person Leia said she'd spoken to on Tatooine?—and watched the two dark-haired men climb the steps in their place.

Wren made to turn away, but he murmured, "I see you don't just take risks when you're flying."

"Well I trust my gut," she bit out, _quietly_. Everyone else was focused on Antilles and Darklighter's run, but it was best to be careful. "And I know right from wrong."

"I respect that." He was surprised to find it was true—he may disagree with most of her and her Rebellion's 'morals', but _this_ one they concurred on.

"But," he added, watching Antilles and Darklighter destroy the Rebel vessel when first ordered, their nervousness and reluctance stark in the Force, "I get the feeling a lot of people here _won't_."


	14. Decision and Doubt

**I'm not quite satisfied with Leia's first two scenes in this chapter, but I can't tell what the problem is. I think they feel a bit heavy-handed? Please let me know if you can work out what's wrong.**

* * *

Inspecting the power grid's security was a short—and fairly depressing—affair. Leia was back at the Imperial Palace with plenty of time to spare, and spent a good few hours planning how she was going to improve the travesty that was security before heading to that oh-so-important meeting Palpatine had scheduled.

He was probably just going to cancel it just after they arrived, she grumbled to herself, citing _important business he needed to get along with_. It wouldn't be the first time, and it had never bothered Leia before—she'd figured there must be a good reason for it—but she no longer subscribed to that naive faith in him. Now she saw it for what it was: a blatant show of control over their time, and a just as blatant disrespect for it.

He enjoyed showing them how much power he had over the littlest things.

This time, though, he didn't cancel. Nor were Leia and Vader the only ones there: a good collection of Moffs and Governors surrounded the table, whether in the flesh or via holograms. She took her place in the conference two seats from Palpatine's right, her father in between them. At least, he was _supposed_ to be between them. He always preferred to stand.

Tarkin sat on Palpatine's left; it was he who started the meeting off.

"My friends," he said, granting a nod to some of the more high-ranking governors but pointedly ignoring Leia's presence. Her blood boiled with the urge to snap his neck; he was always dismissive of her and Luke, always considered them beneath them, even after they'd saved his sorry backside for the umpteenth time. "I trust you have all been debriefed about the near-massacre that was the Kuat Uprising?"

Leia raised her eyebrows. No one had told her what this meeting would be about, and she'd confess to slight surprise at this topic.

"Thanks to Miss Leia and her brother, the situation was pacified." He _did_ nod at her then, but she knew it was mocking.

The man wasn't stupid: he knew where the power lay, and where the power would soon shift to. But he was too arrogant to accept it. He saw her father as a simple attack dog; she wasn't much better.

"It has now been long enough that the intelligence officers working on the case have deemed anymore information they could glean from it would be outdated, and it's declared closed. The Empire will now release an official statement on it."

Leia resisted the urge to roll her eyes. So _this_ was what it was about. Palpatine couldn't have just sent her a report with everything she was supposed to say to the press, or. . .?

Palpatine caught her eye, and she quickly averted her gaze, stacking up her shields again. She knew her politician's face remained flawless despite her grumbling; either Palpatine knew her too well, or her shields had slipped.

She preferred to think the latter.

"This statement," Tarkin continued, "will inform the populace that Kuat was an accident. Governor Trite was inexperienced and incompetent, and when he hired incompetent workers they managed to cripple a good deal of the system. However, now he's been executed for his failure in serving our great Emperor," he inclined his head at Palpatine respectfully, "I have taken control of the Kuat system and surrounding area. I will immediately seek to set things right, and improve the output of our Empire's most productive facilities!"

"_You_?" Leia burst out amid the smattering of applause. She heard several gasps from newer, lower ranking governors around the table, but she didn't care. She was the future Empress: Palpatine would let her weigh into and speak out at these meetings, even if no one else may. How else was she to win their respect? "My brother and I installed Governor _Vilrein_ to oversee the improvements."

"And she did, for a time." Tarkin smiled thinly. "But it was felt that Vilrein, as a commander who had worked on Kuat before the disaster, might have too much of a closed view on what best to do for the system. I have been installed in her place."

"You're a military leader. Not a production manager."

"Precisely. Perhaps I can motivate the workers to serve their Empire the way Trite and Vilrein couldn't."

Leia gritted her teeth. That was the most illogical thing she'd ever heard.

But it wasn't that, or even the change in leadership, that bothered her. It was the fact that she hadn't been informed.

"You were off gallivanting on Naboo," Tarkin provided.

_I was stopping another revolt_, she wanted to snap. _Which is more than I can say for you_.

But it wasn't Tarkin's lack of action in that, either. He'd done plenty of that before they'd come around, after all.

No.

It was the fact that this was being called an _accident_.

Calling minor Rebel attacks on minor outposts _accidents_ made sense; spreading panic over a minor problem seemed counterproductive.

But Kuat was the main production line for the Empire, and it had ground entirely to a halt. Luke and Leia had spent weeks, months, trawling through the station, killing Rebels and crushing uprisings. Their attack had been brutal, as had the other Rebel attacks from around the galaxy.

Calling it an _accident_ felt like an insult, both to her, who bathed her hands in blood to make things right, and to all the people who had died. Rebel and Imperial alike.

Saw Gerrera was a _threat_. They needed to know what his aims were.

"We don't want to terrorise the populace, after all."

Only, they _should_ be afraid.

Because Leia certainly was.

"These official reports will be disseminated all across the galaxy; each of you is in charge of doing so in your own sector. We need this event to blow over as soon as possible; we need people to see the Empire as _strong_."

There was more light applause as he took his seat again, and Leia clapped along unthinkingly. The Empire _did_ need to be _seen_ as strong, true. . . but the problem wasn't that it was _perceived_ to be weak. The problem wasn't that people _believed_ it had fallen prey to a terrorist attack.

The problem was that it _had_.

It _was_ weak.

And Leia needed to find a way to fix that.

* * *

A day after the farce in the simulators, Luke sensed the commotion when Governor Pryce and the ISB's shuttle landed, but he forced himself to pretend he didn't.

So. They'd decided he'd had enough time to uproot the defectors and be ready to report.

_Or_, they figured he'd be more able to find them when the cadets got nervous enough to slip up.

They were right on the second count, at least. The moment Governor Pryce had stepped in front of the assembled cadets and announced her investigation for treason, he'd sensed sheer, unadulterated panic from two minds: Wedge Antilles and Rake Gahree.

So those were their defectors.

Wren did an admirable job of keeping herself composed, but Luke could sense she was worried too.

After Pryce stepped away, she met Luke's eye. It was a brief contact, barely noticeable, but it told him two things.

One: Pryce was one of the few involved in this who knew which cadet was the spy.

Two: She was now expecting him to do something about it himself.

Report the name he had _now_, before they had any chance of escaping?

No. He wasn't sure that those were the only potential defectors here: they were the only ones who'd reacted, but there could be more, who were just naturally better at shielding somehow. Just naturally calmer. He had to lure those ones out, somehow.

And that meant getting close to either Antilles or Gahree.

He took his chance later that evening, after mess. Pryce had grounded them all for the duration of the investigation, much to his dismay, and he found himself walking towards the hangars in longing, wishing he could fly anyway.

It seemed he wasn't the only one.

Antilles was standing on one of the walkways overhead, leaning against the railing and staring at the hangar entrance with a slight frown, helmet tucked under his arm.

Luke paused, then wandered out onto the walkway to join him.

"Is something wrong?" he asked quietly, leaning against the railing next to him.

Antilles jerked. "Uh—no," he said, a little too quickly. "It's nothing."

Luke let it drop for now, resolving to work his way round to it. "You're Antilles, right? You were great in the simulators yesterday."

"Thanks." He sounded a bit sheepish, but a bit distracted, too. "So were you."

Luke said wryly, "I got shot down because I didn't fire on an unarmed transport. You're the one who actually followed orders."

"Yeah, well, I was just doing what I was supposed to."

"But. . . according to Imperial protocol, we're not to fire on unarmed transports. If I'd known. . ." He sighed, faking conflict. "Just. . . this isn't what I signed up for." He shook his head. "Never mind."

He saw Antilles shoot him a look in his peripheral vision, but his kept his gaze fixed pensively on the hangar floor. After a moment, Antilles looked down as well.

"This. . . isn't what I signed up for, either," he admitted.

"I want to do my part for the Empire," Luke added, "but. . ."

"It's not what you expected."

"Yeah."

"I was flying cargo ships when the Empire recruited me," Antilles went on. "At the time I figured, _why not? _Seemed a whole lot more excited than hauling spare parts around the galaxy. But if this is what the Empire is becoming. . ."

_If this is what the Empire is becoming. . ._

Nowadays, Luke wasn't sure the Empire hadn't always been like this, but he understood Antilles's frustration. Luke had always thought that whatever blood the Empire shed, whatever unnecessary cruelty and corruption it had in it, it could be purged with time. Especially once Leia became Empress.

But if Antilles thought it was getting _worse_. . .

He didn't know.

_The Rebels were there to _save_ lives, not end them. The Partisans are the ones who end them._

_And the Empire, too._

They were at war. The bloodshed was necessary.

_Firing on unarmed opponents was not necessary._

Antilles was looking at him strangely. "Are you—"

"Are you boys alright?"

Luke nearly jumped out of his skin. He scolded him—stupid, stupid to let his guard down that much, so that _Sabine Wren_, the person he was _supposed to be watching_, could sneak up on him.

Antilles clammed up immediately. "Yes."

"Hey, Three-Six," Luke said jokingly, smiling at her slightly. It was one way of disguising how shaken he was.

"Just call me Ria," she said, returning the smile briefly, "and I can call you Darred." She looked at Antilles. "You're Wedge, right?"

He nodded, still looking distracted but starting to zone back in to the conversation. "Yeah."

Wren joined them in leaning against the railing. "So what were you talking about?"

"Nothing," Wedge said, very quickly. He wasn't very good at this.

Luke said, "She refused to fire as well, remember?" At Wedge's frown, then nod, he said to Wren, "We were just saying that we're not fans of. . . that."

Wren nodded. "I want to do my part for the Empire, but—"

"Firing on unarmed ships is not what you had in mind."

She smiled slightly. "Exactly."

There was a pregnant pause. Luke let his eyes drift around the hangar bay, ostensibly lost in thought, but he was paying close attention to the resolve he could sense building in Wren, building, until—

"Have you ever thought about getting out?"

There it was.

Wedge frowned. "That's. . . not really possible," he said, though anyone could hear the hope in his voice, "is it?"

"Maybe more possible than you realise."

"What are you talking about?"

Wren took a step closer and dropped her voice. "My real name is Sabine Wren. I was sent in to get you out."

Wedge's face practically lit up. Luke let his face show the same glee. "So the Rebellion _did_ get my message!"

"Yes, but I heard there were other pilots who want out, too."

"There are. Darred," Wedge gestured at Luke, who nodded his confirmation, "and I can find you the rest."

_There._

_That _was what Luke had been waiting for. He just needed the names, and then—

And then he'd turn Wedge in.

He pushed the thought away as Wren said, "We need to leave _now_, before the Empire closes in. Can you have them ready?"

"I'll talk to them," Wedge said, and despite himself, Luke was impressed that he kept the names secret until the very last moment. "What's your plan?"

"I'll. . ." Wren gave a small, self-deprecating snort. "I'll tell you when I figure that out."

Luke resisted the urge to roll his eyes and grin simultaneously.

They both looked at him. "Are you in?"

Luke nodded. "Absolutely."

They all exchanged nervous smiles, then Wren walked away. Wedge went in the other direction, until only Luke was left, staring at the stars just visible beyond the hangar entrance.

He'd been right to wait. And he'd wait a little longer, until he knew their plan and the identities of the other sympathisers. Then he'd hand them all over.

He swallowed at the idea.

Wedge had betrayed the Empire. He'd colluded with the Rebellion. He _had_ to turn him in.

But after that conversation. . . he didn't want to.

Wedge just wanted adventure, and he wanted it without innocent blood on his hands. So did Luke.

He was planning on defecting.

_For all you know,_ a voice parried, _so is Leia._

_Would you turn Leia in?_

Of course not. That was _Leia_. He—

Luke took a deep breath.

He'd hand them over. Those were his orders, and he was already in enough trouble with the Emperor as it was.

That didn't mean he had to _like_ _it_.

* * *

The moment she left the meeting, Leia sent a surreptitious comm to Governor Vilrein to confirm what Tarkin had said. She scowled fiercely when the woman responded in minutes—messages from the heir to the Empire were generally given higher priority, after all—with a confirmation of what had been said.

Tarkin had ousted the governor they'd installed, and it hadn't even caused enough of a ripple for them to hear about it.

_And _he'd done it without Palpatine's blessing. Not that he _needed_ it, per se, nor would he be punished for not seeking it, but that wasn't what concerned Leia.

What concerned her was _that_ Tarkin hadn't needed it.

She hated Palpatine, but his utter and constant control over the Empire had always been a given, in her eyes. She'd presumed, whenever she saw something she disagreed with, that it could be traced back to Palpatine.

_Palpatine_ was the source of all evil.

She'd never paused to think about the governors.

Because, come to think of it, Palpatine just controlled the Imperial Court and Senate. He revelled in manipulating particular senators or courtiers to serve his ends, but that was all he did: manipulate. _That_ was what he enjoyed doing.

He didn't take much of a direct hand in ruling, simply because he didn't have to. He appointed governors he liked and when he told them to do something, they did it. Otherwise they did as they pleased.

Leia wondered how much the laws between sectors differed, simply because of the person who ruled them.

Palpatine had set up that system of corruption she'd observed in there, but it was the men and women within who maintained it. Come to think of it, there were very few governors she actually approved of, even discounting the effects of her father's intense dislike of politicians. Governor Vilrein—well, ex-governor now—had been one, if only because she was first and foremost an officer, rather than a politician. Moff Panaka had been another, but he'd been assassinated by Saw Gerrera the year before. And then there was Governor Pryce, who was ambitious, but canny and ruthless enough to back it up. But she was overseeing the ISB operation on Skystrike that Luke was a part of. And even then, Leia wasn't sure how long her impressive competence would last.

Leia leaned against the wall of the corridor, thankful that at least this one was deserted. She needed a moment to clear her head, and the standard Imperial greys and whites were soothing.

She rubbed her eyes. How much inter-sector politicking was there going on, which she had no idea of? How much control over it would she even have, once she became Empress?

She supposed that once she was Empress, she could put her foot down and monitor the situation more closely. _Force_ them to obey _her_ law, _her_ plans and ambitions, even more closely than Palpatine did, and that was the only way to rise to _theirs_.

But the constant grovelling of the Imperial Court got on her nerves as it was. And she had the feeling that there would always be Governor Tarkins in the galaxy, always be _someone_ too competent to dismiss but too wilful and underhanded for her liking. Every puppet she appointed would work out how to cut its strings eventually, and then she'd be dealing with _this_, every day, for the rest of her life.

She supposed that was what being Empress meant.

Footsteps came down the hall, and she detected one of those deeply loathed presences now. She instinctively straightened up, fixing a faint sneer onto her face as she tilted back her chin to look Tarkin in the eye and said, "Governor."

He gave a thin-lipped smile in response. "Miss Leia." He didn't return her nod, and she gritted her teeth. She might be young—and she _was_ young, _Force_, the idea that soon she might be ruling an entire galaxy was _terrifying_—but that didn't mean it wasn't tactful for him to pay respect to his future Empress.

"I just wanted to express my admiration for your work on Kuat," he continued. "I have been assessing the damage that was repaired by your efforts, and I am very impressed. I do hope I get your work with you and your brother in the future; we may have a lot to teach each other."

She opened her mouth to instantly reject him. . . then closed it again.

As much as she hated the man's guts, she couldn't deny his competence—and his cunning. It would be good to see how he worked, so as to better understand how he _thought_.

He was Palpatine's favourite; Palpatine's _creature_. Once Palpatine was dead, she needed to know that that creature would not bite.

"It would be my pleasure," she lied—it wouldn't be a pleasure, but it _would_ be useful. "I shall talk to my brother about it."

He nodded, then made to move on. Leia glowered at his back the whole time.

Maybe the governors were a part of the problem as well. . . but maybe understanding a problem was the first step towards fixing it.

* * *

When Luke returned to his bunk, he found an encoded message waiting for him on his datapad, ordering him to report what he'd found.

He hesitated only momentarily before typing out his report. . . but he made a point to avoid giving names, or committing to an escape attempt plan, before he was _absolutely certain_.

At least, that was the excuse he gave Pryce, and who was she to question it?

* * *

Her frustration over the meeting—and just how _enlightening_ it had been on just how little she understood the Imperial Court—hadn't yet abated, so Leia took to the training room.

She could have returned home, she supposed, and trained there. But it was too quiet without Luke and her father's overwhelming presences, and there was technically a training room in the Imperial Palace, near to the rooms Palpatine tutored her in. The Inquisitors would sometimes come here as well, but it was primarily for Luke and Leia.

And the fact that the Inquisitors were entitled to come in here as well didn't stop her from trying to ram a lightsaber through the Sixth Sister when she entered the room all of a sudden, in the middle of a particularly complex manoeuvre Leia had been trying and failing to get right for a solid hour. Her frustration and mounting helplessness tore out of her with a scream; when she heard the doors hiss open, she turned and threw her lit lightsaber at the newcomer.

If it was her father or the Emperor, they could block it; if it was anyone else, she didn't care. They could get skewered for all it mattered.

The Sixth Sister saw it coming and barely deflected it in time, her lightsaber on her back and the manoeuvre to retrieve it too slow to execute. Instead, she seized the Force raggedly to push it aside not a moment too soon. . . but the blade carved a shallow furrow in her right palm nonetheless.

She hissed, her resentment mounting in the Force, but wisely didn't comment.

"What do you want?" Leia snapped.

The Sixth Sister lifted her chin. Her helmet was closed, so Leia couldn't see her face, but she imagined she was sneering.

"My apologies," she clipped out. "I was looking for your brother, and thought—"

"Why were you looking for him?" Leia didn't need an excuse—she knew that she and Luke felt similar through the Force, especially to someone as poorly trained as an Inquisitor—but she wanted an explanation.

"I needed to talk to him."

"About what?"

"Something he did for me before."

Leia frowned. _Something he did for me. . .? _"What did he do?"

"Ask him."

"I'm asking _you_."

Leia had never treated the Sixth Sister nicely—neither had Luke, at least until he'd _done something for her_, whatever that might be. It wasn't unusual for her to be so reticent in answering.

"And I'm telling you to ask him."

"I don't take orders from you."

The Sixth Sister clenched her fists. "And I don't take orders from you," she said quietly, "_my lady_."

She was right.

She took orders from the Emperor, and Vader. But not Leia.

Not yet, anyway.

Leia snapped, "Luke's away on a mission. Indefinitely."

"Thank you. Then I'll come back when he has."

With that, she turned around and left.

Leia was left staring after her, wondering what in the _galaxy_ that had been about.

* * *

The announcement crackled through the corridors, each pilot stopping in their tracks to listen. _"Squadron, report to hangar six."_

So, Luke thought, Pryce was lifting the order to keep all the pilots grounded. That either meant they'd found nothing, and were relying on him to hunt them down, or. . .

This was a trap.

He turned left into the corridor that took him directly to the hangars, and fell into step with Wren as they exchanged a loaded look. He could sense Wedge and three others approaching from behind, tense and nervous, but forced himself to react like he'd only just seen them when they finally came into earshot.

"Sabine!" Wedge hissed. Luke almost cringed. He could see why Wedge had gone into piloting, and not espionage. "Darred! This is Rake, Biggs and Hobbie." He gestured to the people he was with. Each looked more tense than the last.

Wren asked, some of the general tension bleeding into her voice as well, "Are you sure you're all committed to this?"

"We've made our choice," 'Hobbie'—Derek Klivian, Luke knew, born on Ralltiir, who'd ranked ninth on the overall leader board at the end of the training session yesterday—said.

Rake—Rake Gahree, who'd finished seventeenth yesterday—added darkly, "There's no turning back now."

And there wasn't, Luke thought grimly. It was clear to him now: they were committed. They were actually intending to go through with this, renounce the Empire and join a band of terrorists. They would help wreak havoc on the galaxy if he let them continue, tear down everything he'd given so much of himself to protect. This was all of them, he had all their names: he should turn them in now, and let the ISB do their job in protecting the galaxy from Rebel scum.

But he'd spent days with these people. Laughing, sharing food, flying. They were not _scum_. They were friends.

Now they were enemies.

Weren't they?

What did that make him?

Considering the sort of thoughts Leia had started to harbour, what did that make _her_?

Luke swallowed, and hoped the others thought it was from fear.

These people were joining an Alliance which they believed wouldn't force them to fire on unarmed ships. They were abandoning the Empire because of a few officers' heartlessness and the need to follow orders.

But they were _afraid_. He could see it in the way Wedge fidgeted, the curtness to Rake's movements, Biggs's tacit silence.

They were terrified, but they were doing this anyway. And for what? An unstoppable tide of morality? Conscience, coming after them time and time again, every time they heard the order to fire?

Every time they followed it?

Luke. . . couldn't fault them for that.

But he was going to condemn them to death for it.

_You must make sure your emotions don't work against you, _his father's voice said into his mind. _You control them, use them to access the dark side. They cannot control you._

He snarled, surprisingly himself with his vehemence, and pushed his father's voice away.

Not _now_. He'd spent enough time hanging onto every word he said and enabling every evil act.

_Like this one?_

They came out onto the walkways the TIEs were stacked on.

Wedge was the one to break the uncomfortable silence with, "I'm surprised they're letting us go up in all this."

_So am I, _Luke thought.

"Well, we have to make the most of this chance. We might not get another." Wren turned around, eyes narrowed. "Okay, listen. There's a rebel ship nearby, waiting for my signal."

The suns rose a little beyond the windows, bathing their faces in gold. Luke held up his hand to block it, while the others just squinted. It gave him a good opportunity to observe their facial expression.

"Watch me. When I go, you go."

This was _definitely_ a trap.

But Wren seemed so certain. He wasn't going to be the one to point out some of the glaring faults in her plans; he could tell from the others' expressions that they were sceptical enough as it was. And Pryce needed them as gullible as possible if the trap was to be sprung.

"But you _have_ to trust me," Wren stressed. It was obvious that she could sense their hesitation as well. "Agreed?"

There was a tense moment of silence. Then Hobbie burst out— "These Rebels you say are waiting for us. Do you trust _them_?"

Wren nodded, and said with more certainty than Luke had heard her say _anything_, "With my life."

The others remained unconvinced.

But then the call to get to the fighters echoed through the hangar, and they were out of time to argue.

"Yeah," Rake muttered, lifted his helmet to his head, "and all of ours."

Luke walked towards and dropped into his fighter. The moment he was securely in place, his helmet on, he reached for his comlink.

Pryce's clipped, imitated-Core accent prompted, _"Well, agent?"_

"I have successfully uncovered all of the Rebel sympathisers," he reported. _This_ came easily to him: getting the words out clearly and concisely, all pertinent information condensed to a few moments of breath. "The Rebel infiltrator sent in to retrieve them plans to use this exercise to make their escape. A Rebel ship is nearby; when the infiltrator gives the signal, it will drop out of hyperspace and the Rebels will make for it."

_"You are certain that _all_ of the Rebel sympathisers have been routed? They will _all _make for the Rebel ship?"_

"I am certain. If not, I can provide the names and identities of those who backed out."

_"Then good work, agent. Continue with your deception. Make for the Rebel ship yourself, or they may grow suspicious. I will order that Captain Skerris _avoids_ firing on the ship with your transponder."_

_How generous of you. _"Thank you, Governor." He took a hold of the controls and prepared to take off. "Over and out."

The signal came, and they all took off as one, like a flock of black birds in the amber atmosphere.

As always when he flew, Luke felt his stomach go out from underneath him in a rush, an unconscious smile creeping across his face. He remembered being fourteen, and hating the fact that his father wanted his destiny to be greater than that of a simple pilot. He'd resented it for a brief spell before deciding he was right, as always; flying could always be a hobby while he was serving the Empire in grander, more influential ways.

Now, in the midst of his tension and pent up anger, he wondered if this was just another thing his father had been wrong about.

The crackle of the comms broke him out of his ruminations. _"Squadrons, prepare to break formation and engage in a simulated dogfight. Your lasers have been nullified, but your hits will still register, and be scored."_

Luke's smile only grew as they broke atmosphere, the ochre curve of Montross arching away beneath them and the twin suns peeking their way over the edge. The blackness of space hung beyond: Luke found himself automatically searching for Mustafar's star, as he always did when he was missing home, then Coruscant's star. Then, after a moment's hesitation, he looked for Tatooine's. He couldn't find it.

He looked back at Coruscant's.

Somewhere, orbiting that tiny pinprick of light, was his sister.

His sister.

Who was harbouring Rebel sympathies. Who he was on the mission to avoid.

The flock of TIEs split into two groups, and Luke found himself on Wren's wing again, staring down the other traitors on the opposing team. He automatically sank into the Force to manoeuvre into position, sensing the thoughts and feelings of the pilots around him, glowing like individual stars in their own right—

_"Three, two, one, mark!"_

The two sides converged, green bolts lighting up the darkness. Luke sensed someone aiming at Wren and fulfilled his job as her wingman and fired twice at the perpetrator, until the TIE peeled off to escape the barrage. It was Wedge, he sensed after a moment's pursuit. It was Wedge, and he was providing a perfect target right now, his back to him and his wingman off doing. . . something else. He made to fire—

And missed.

He _made_ himself miss; yanked himself to the side very suddenly and fought to keep control.

He snarled.

This was a _simulated battle_. He shouldn't be experiencing this kind of. . . this kind of _panic_, this _gravity_. This _wasn't real_.

But he _liked_ Wedge.

He was honest enough to admit it to himself. And for one moment, it felt like the man was already a Rebel. Like it was an X-wing on his scopes, and the bolts he fired would send it up in flames.

He had a horrible sense of déjà vu, and pushed it away.

He needed to _focus_.

If Wedge _did_ feel like a Rebel, that was because he was. He'd made his choice, and in a few minutes he would suffer the consequences. Luke could do nothing about it.

The uneasiness remained.

He spun his craft in a sharp dive to avoid a fighter coming from behind; Wren shot out of nowhere to blast it dead centre. The blast temporarily disabled the craft, but Luke figured a few moments later it would be back up and running.

_"You alright there, Two-Three?"_

"Just fine," he got out through gritted teeth, and plunged himself back into the fray. He was absolutely _fine_—

The Force screamed a warning as the Rebel craft barrelled into realspace, materialising over the top of their heads in a moment. Luke could sense several people aboard: mainly human, and two presences that might well be the Jedi of Phoenix Squadron. . .

_"Come on, boys!" _Wren called out over the comms, her voice audibly more relaxed now her allies were here. Luke wanted to cringe. _It's a trap, you—_

But all of the defectors peeled off to make for the transport. Wedge, Biggs, Hobbie, Rake. All of them.

No one had had second thoughts.

Luke let out a breath through his teeth and made to follow. He couldn't give the game away now—

Pryce's sharp, self-satisfied tones came over the comms. _"Cadets, return to base immediately. This is your only warning."_

_"Negative, command," _Wren shot right back. She sounded somewhere between giddy with relief and satisfied at the success. Luke cringed again. _"You're gonna have to come and get us."_

They kept going for the Rebel ship. A sense of foreboding was building in Luke's gut—_it's coming, it's coming, it's coming_—but he kept going too, ignoring the sensation like a stone in his stomach, a noose around his neck—

He felt the panic before he heard the buzz. Suddenly an electric shock ran through his fighter, and it _shook_, the craft suddenly unresponsive to his desperate yanks on the controls. He was drifting dead in space.

His fighter spun around slightly, enough so he could see the others', and he understood what had happened.

The TIEs' wings had disconnected. All systems were down—no, not all. Life support still worked. Comms still worked.

Which was why he could _hear_ Wren's sudden panic, as well as feel it. _"We've lost power! Our fighters were rigged!"_

_I'd never have guessed, _Luke wanted to snap back, but kept quiet. He knew he was safe.

This justice was reserved for the enemies of the Empire. They _deserved_ this terror coursing through them, they'd earned it for their treason, and he _did not feel sorry for them at all_—

_This is not justice._

He could sense Skerris and his wingmen converging on their position. He could hear Pryce's, _"Captain, destroy one of the pods."_

He could feel Rake's terror as he burned in space. The fireball vanished within moments, as though it had never been there at all.

_"Rake!"_ That was Wedge, naked anguish in his voice. _They deserve this._

Luke clenched his fists as he drifted further away from the planet. _They deserve this._

_They defied the Empire. They betrayed us. They would have flown into battle again and again against good Imperials risking their lives to protect the galaxy._

But Luke's useless platitudes meant nothing. He knew the truth.

_They just didn't want to fire on unarmed transports._


	15. Shatterpoint Three

Shortly after the Sixth Sister deigned to leave Leia alone, the door opened again. She spun on her heel, lit lightsaber whipping around with the motion, ready to throw again. . . then she saw who was in the doorway, and stopped just in time.

Her father just crossed his arms and gave her a look.

"What do you want?" she snapped, irritated—with him, with herself, with the entire blasted galaxy, she didn't know. It made her antsy.

It made her _especially_ antsy that she'd been so absorbed in her own emotions that she hadn't sensed the dark bonfire of her father's presence before he made himself known.

She was supposed to have better control than that.

Vader remained unimpressed by the anger. Of course he did: he probably had that much, and more to spare. "I could sense your frustration during the board meeting."

"Please, like you're never frustrated during them," she bit back. She knew, logically, that none of this—well, not all of this—was her father's fault, but she was angry and he was an available target. "At least _you_ can strangle someone without worrying about the political repercussions."

"You know that your brother does not like it when I 'strangle' people, as you so put it."

"He doesn't like it for minor things. When they're being annoying he understands completely."

"I concede the point." Vader uncrossed his arms. "But I sense an _unusual_ amount of frustration from you, and it has only increased since you left the meeting."

The worry was implicit in the words, evident only to one who knew to look, but it warmed her all the same, despite her lingering resentment towards him over. . . everything.

He was her father. She wanted to trust him.

So she let out a sharp sigh. "I assume you heard about Governor Vilrein and Tarkin."

"Indeed. Such political machinations are typical between the governors and other elite."

"We installed Vilrein because she was competent."

"And Tarkin deposed her because he was influential. This galaxy runs on power, not competence."

"And I hate it." Leia stared at the tip of her lightsaber. Her arm couldn't stop bouncing, restless as she was; she drew small red circles on the air. "How are we to get results if the people muscling their way into positions of power don't know what they're doing? What's the point of. . . _this_," she gestured around the room with her saber, the walls and floor marked with years and years of hardcore training, "if _Tarkin_ just waltzes in to take positions from someone more suited to it than him?"

"Governor Tarkin has his skills."

"Yeah, and they lie in mass slaughter and other brutal military tactics. He can crush revolution. He can't _build_ anything."

She waited for her father to disagree. He never did.

"The galaxy is corrupt," he said. Leia rolled her eyes—she did _not_ want to hear another _people are inherently greedy and selfish_ speech from him right now—but he surprised her. "There are corrupt people in power right now. Soon, you will be in a position of power yourself, and you will be able to change that."

The coup. His coup. Her father was always going on about his coup, how everything would be _better_ once they carried it out, but he hadn't shared _any_ details with them yet. Leia hadn't pressed, and nor had Luke—the incident after Tatooine had almost shattered his faith in their father entirely—but so far Vader was all talk and no action.

And that was _exactly_ what he always accused the politicians of being.

"Yeah, well." She felt very cold and alone, all of a sudden. She extinguished her lightsaber and hugged herself, glancing down. "I didn't feel very powerful in there."

Vader stepped forward and gently tilted her head up to meet his eyes.

"You _are_ powerful," he told her. "If those governors refuse to acknowledge it, that is their own foolishness. In a few short years, you will hold their lives in the palm of your hand, and they will regret not respecting you when they had the chance."

Leia didn't want to think that she might still care at that point—they were only petty politicians, after all, and barely worth her notice—but the part of her that was her father's daughter felt a vindictive pleasure at the thought. They'd feel her revenge for how they treated her—

"You could even dissolve the governors altogether, if you wanted, and replace them with something else. Erase all power they could possibly have had."

The words struck a chord in her. _Dissolve the governors. _

_Replace them with something else._

"What would I replace them with?" she asked, then scoffed, "The Imperial Senate?" They both knew Palpatine's upcoming plans to be rid of it, and instead only _strengthen_ the governors' control.

Her father's voice was amused. "If you think that would work better. The bureaucracy and petty squabbling would certainly make it easier for you to get your own way every time, rather than haggling with men who consider themselves greater than they are."

She nodded, barely listening anymore. The idea. . . wasn't a bad one.

She filed it away for later reference. She had a great many things she wanted to change once she became Empress; dealing with the corrupt representatives was only one of many issues on the table.

_You'd better get on with that coup, then, _she commented to her father mentally, taking a step back and watching his hand fall back to his side.

She turned around, drew her lightsaber again and went back to her exercises.

We _will get on with it as soon as your brother returns, _her father said pointedly. She turned back around, her lightsaber poised over her head, to see him with his own saber drawn and pointed at her. _I have much I need to discuss with you._

She grinned, and assumed a ready stance herself. Her poor mood from earlier had all but evaporated.

_Bring it on._

* * *

The ship that scooped them out of dead space did not do so gently, or with any great care. Luke was picked up last, and treated to the sight of Wren, Biggs and Wedge all bound and kneeling in the hold, stormtroopers holding blasters to their heads.

The moment Luke himself emerged from the TIE, he was seized and given the same generous treatment. As the binders bit into his skin he familiarised himself with the workings of them, the mechanics of the lock, and pressed the Force against them like a trigger ready to be ignited at any moment. He didn't know whether or not these stormtroopers would try to hurt him, a perceived defector, and he needed to be careful.

They had orders to ensure none of them were harmed—Pryce, if no one else, knew who he was, and what the consequences could be if he was injured—but this wouldn't be the first time troopers disobeyed such orders. Especially if they felt personally slighted by it.

"On your knees!" a trooper barked, standing back to conveniently make a space for him right next to Biggs. He gritted his teeth, set his shoulders and knelt. He could sense Wedge, Biggs and Hobbie as a ball of nerves right next to him; Wren was just as apprehensive, but better at hiding it.

Luke tilted his head back to look right down the barrel of the blaster pointed at him. He wondered what the stormtrooper would think if he realised he was threatening Luke Skywalker, second in line to the Imperial throne, son of Darth Vader, future Commander of the Navy—

Nothing, probably.

The name _Luke Skywalker_ would mean nothing to him.

It certainly seemed to mean nothing to his father.

He lowered his head again.

"Darred?" Biggs hissed beside him. He got a blaster butt to the head for talking, but he persisted: "Darred, are you alright?"

Of course he wasn't alright—Biggs knew that. But apparently some of his emotions had leaked onto his face. He'd need to fix that.

Most of all, though, he realised that Biggs genuinely cared.

He hadn't spoken to the man much. Mainly Luke's plan had been to befriend Wedge, and root out the defectors through him. But he _had_ seen Biggs around the academy, smiled at him, joked with him. Biggs was just a decent person a few years older than Luke, who saw a seventeen-year-old afraid for his life, and had the nobility to push his own fear aside to comfort him.

And Luke was going to turn him in. Have him executed.

_He's a Rebel._

_He's a traitor._

The word meant less to him, now.

He could no longer separate _traitor_ from _family_.

The ship shuddered as they entered the atmosphere. After that it was just a short, inexorable stretch before they were touching down in the hangar, the landing ramp hissed and descended, and they were being forced to their feet.

Governor Pryce, Agent Kallus and Instructor Goran stood in a row outside, their sharp eyes watching the troopers frogmarch them down the ramp. Luke met Pryce's eye very briefly and gave the smallest of nods. She made no response, but he sensed that she'd seen it—and was beyond satisfied with the results of his work.

"Take them to individual cells and process them," she ordered, her spine straightening a little as she gave the order. He felt her pleasure at the thought of the coming interrogation, and his opinion of her dropped. "We shall find out which of you was the Rebel agent soon enough, and then I shall have _so_ many. . . _specific_. . . questions for that person."

Everyone pointedly tried not to look at Wren.

Pryce waved her hand. "Stun them all."

To further confuse them when they awoke in a cell, without the faintest clue where they were. Luke was familiar with the trick, and certainly didn't want it happening to him. He yanked on the Force and the binders fell open.

He didn't waste a moment: he rolled to the side and ducked. His companions slumped to the ground, unconscious, but his stun blast missed him; he wrenched the blaster out of the trooper's grip and turned, already prepared to duck if one of the others took a shot at him—

"Halt," Pryce ordered.

She took several steps forward, until she was standing right in front of him, and ran an assessing eye from his head to his toes.

"I must admit that you did well, agent. You are certain that those are all the Rebel sympathisers in this academy?"

Luke felt the shock of the troopers around them. It amused him—the _only_ thing about this situation that did—and so that was why he smiled when he said, "Yes."

"Which was the Rebel infiltrator?"

"Ria Talla. She's Sabine Wren, a member of Phoenix Squadron. One of the Rebels in your own sector, I believe?"

More shock at the fact he didn't address her as _governor_, as well as the dig, but he ignored it. Pryce was still looking at him with something close to approval.

"Indeed. I will make a note to mention your skilled performance when I make my report," she said. Oh, now _she_ knew how to suck up to future powers in the Empire. Leia would be both reassured and disgusted by her. "I am sure your father is proud to have a son like you."

_I'm not ashamed of you._

_I'm incredibly, incredibly proud of you._

Luke frowned. Clearly not proud enough to trust them with the truth.

He didn't respond to Pryce's comment. He was sure his response had been noted, and analysed, but he didn't care. He just walked away before being dismissed, the third sign of disrespect in as many minutes that left the troopers reeling.

He went back to his dormitory at first. He needed to collect his things; he'd be leaving soon. His job here was done.

He packed up all his meagre belongings—he'd barely brought anything, just outfits in various shades of black to wear when he wasn't in his uniform—and lay on the bunk for a while, staring at the ceiling. He tried to let his mind wander, but everything in him seemed focused on three room, three _cells_, a few floors below him.

Biggs was pacing his cell, his terror stark and multiplying. Hobbie was still unconscious. Wedge was marginally calmer, but that was because he seemed to be sitting or standing in one particular place, clamping down on his emotions with an iron fist.

Wren seemed to be fist-fighting Pryce—_how_ had the governor managed to get herself in _that_ situation?—and winning.

That wasn't what he kept cycling back to.

Wedge and Biggs—Force, Hobbie as well—were decent people. They just didn't want to fire on unarmed transports. Did he really think they deserved this?

Well, no. But orders were orders. And it wasn't like he could change it anyway.

He let out a sigh, then swung his legs off the bunk and stood up.

Perhaps he couldn't change it.

Perhaps.

But there was one thing he _definitely_ couldn't do, and that was stand by and watch.

* * *

Leia returned to the apartment by herself after her sparring match with Vader—he was busy. He was always busy.

And Luke was still away.

Idly, instinctively, she reached along that bond again. The emptiness hit her harder every time.

She needed someone to talk to. Her father's words and her problems with the governors had given her too much to think about; she needed to. . . _vent_. . . to someone willing to listen. She needed ideas for what to do.

What _could_ she replace the governors with?

She knew it was insane. She knew it was reckless.

The datachip holding Tsabin's contact information seemed to burn a hole in her pocket anyway.

* * *

The corridors blurred into each other, but Luke just walked quickly, back straight. He didn't have the TIE pilot's helmet most cadets carried throughout the halls, but if anyone noticed or objected to that, a slight nudge in the Force caused them to forget it a moment later.

The detention area was only lightly guarded—it wasn't like an academy had much use for cells, except in extreme cases—so after a moment's hesitation, Luke just mind-tricked his way past the few guards who _were_ there. He could sense Biggs, Wedge and Hobbie's cells ahead, as well as Wren and Pryce's ongoing fight a few doors down. Hobbie's was the first he arrived at.

He paused in front of the cell door. His finger hovered over the release.

What was he doing?

He hadn't even switched off or destroyed the holocams. They were monitoring his every move; if this got back to Palpatine, he'd either kill Luke for his disloyalty, or take him apart piece by piece and put him back together into something that was _Luke_ no longer.

He'd seen him do it to Inquisitors, after all. And what was Luke but a glorified Inquisitor?

This was so, so _reckless_. He knew the risks.

He knew the risks, he thought grimly as he thumbed the keypad, and he chose to take them.

Hobbie lay half-conscious on the floor; apparently the troopers who'd dumped him in here hadn't even bothered to drag him onto the bunk in the corner. He stirred briefly as the light fell across his face. "What—"

Luke cast his senses out. No one nearby, no one to hit lock on the door if he walked in to help him out; he was safe. And if he _did_ get locked in, he could unlock it through the Force.

Still, his steps were urgent and hurried as he descended the steps and got one of Hobbie's arms around his shoulder.

". . .Darred?" Hobbie slurred, but he was more awake now. "Did you escape?"

"Yes," Luke lied. "The stun blast wore off pretty quickly, I managed to get away from the troopers."

After a moment's thought, he realised he couldn't explain the fact that the guards to the detention level were still awake. So naturally he reached out, got a feel for their individual consciousnesses, then knocked them out through the Force.

"Let's go. We need to hurry."

Hobbie was awake enough to walk on his own by the time they reached Wedge's cell. Wedge was more alert, and _jumped_ at the opportunity to escape; thankfully, he didn't even question how they'd done it. Luke didn't have an in-depth explanation yet himself.

Biggs remained calm. He seemed sceptical, even concerned—Luke supposed growing up on a lawless dustball like Tatooine would breed a natural suspicion, and he wondered briefly if he'd be like that if his father hadn't found him—but wasn't one to turn down an opportunity when he saw it.

Luke felt it when Governor Pryce was knocked out. They kept running, and ran right into Wren.

"Hey," he said, cheeks pink and panting slightly. She'd clearly just been fighting. Her fingers were curled around the grip of a trooper's blaster. "You got out?"

Wedge nodded. "Darred escaped the guards and came looking for us."

"How'd you know what cells to look in?"

Luke shrugged, and hoped the gesture didn't betray his nervousness. "I. . . didn't. I opened a few wrong doors at first, then guessed."

"You were pretty quick if you spent all that time opening doors. Good guesses."

He shrugged again. The back of his neck was damp with sweat. "I guess I got lucky."

He could sense her suspicion, still, but it wasn't negative. It was more like. . . she was impressed. She suspected there was more to him—Jedi-like reflexes and intuition and all—but she still believed him a genuine sympathiser.

Rebels. He resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Even the ex-Imperials were far too trusting.

And speaking of reflexes—

"_Look out_!" Luke grabbed Wedge and dived to the side as a crimson blaster bolt streaked down the corridor. He watched the trooper advance. . . then retreat again as Wren took aim at them, her precision deadly.

She had good aim; he had to give her that.

"Other way, let's go!"

They hurtled around a corner, the troopers in hot pursuit. Luke could already see Wedge, Biggs and Hobbie beginning to tire—they clearly weren't used to running so much after a stun blast—but they needed to push on. They needed to—

The thought brought him up short.

What?

How were they going to escape?

Getting to the hangars was the obvious answer; if they played it right, and flew well enough, _they_ could escape. But Luke couldn't.

He needed to go back to Coruscant—he needed to go back to his father. And Leia.

He needed to tell her that she was right. That maybe these Rebels had something to them after all.

And he couldn't do that if he fled with the Rebellion. Even if that could mean finally meeting Amidala, finally meeting—

_Maybe_ finally meeting his mother.

What had she thought, all these years her offspring had fought against everything she stood for?

What would she think of _this_?

The troopers were gaining again. Luke stopped in the middle of the corridor.

"Darred, what are you _doing_—"

Luke flung out his hands and the troopers were blasted back. The door closed across the corridor without anyone pushing the button.

He turned back to his companions. Wren was gaping at him.

"You're a J—"

"Not exactly," he said quietly. A flick of his finger, and the door on the other end of the corridor closed as well.

"_'Not exactly_'? Who else is there?"

Luke's snarky side was tempted to point out Ahsoka Tano, but Wren didn't need any further prompting. She was staring at him, at his eyes, his fingers. One of her hands curled around her bicep, her arm across her chest; it had suddenly become extremely cold in here.

She snarled at him, "_Demon_."

"Sabine?" Wedge asked, looking from one to the other. "Darred? What's going on?"

Luke ignored him, and kept his gaze fixed on Wren.

"Avoid levels three through five," he told her. He could sense the activity of the academy, like buzzing spots of light around his head. "Hangar twenty-four is your best possibility."

Another press of the Force, and one of the doors opened again.

"Why should I trust you?" she spat. The blaster was levelled at him now. "You're an _Imperial_, you're—"

"I know exactly who I am," he said coolly. "If I wanted you dead, I would have left you to Pryce. Now, I suggest you get moving, before she manages to catch up with you."

Reluctantly, Wren lowered the blaster. She jerked her head at Biggs, Wedge, Hobbie, and they followed her down the corridor, casting questioning looks as each other and Luke.

"Oh," Luke called after them. "And tell Amidala," he took a breath, his gaze unwittingly shifting to Biggs, then took the jump, "that Luke Skywalker sends his regards."

He ignored the shock in the Force, and instead shut the door again. He was still facing in that direction when the one he'd just come through opened.

He jumped, whirling around, his hand out.

"Don't," Kallus said. "I'm not going to hurt you." He surveyed Luke for a moment. "I. . . wasn't aware that the Rebellion had more than one of us here."

_More than one of us here. . ._

Luke wanted to laugh, or cry, or both. Kallus had just admitted to him that he was a Rebel agent. He might even be the Fulcrum agent who'd told the Rebellion about the defectors in the first place.

And he thought Luke was a Fulcrum agent as well.

He didn't say anything, but Kallus was already turning away.

"I'll doctor the recordings," he said. "I suggest you get out of here quickly, before Pryce looks too closely at the reasons for their escape."

Luke watched him go.

The Rebels escaped. Barely, but they escaped. Later on, Luke would board a shuttle back to Coruscant, accompanied by a furious Governor Pryce who would not _shut up_ about how this wasn't a show of her incompetence.

Luke didn't care.

He had more important things to think about.

* * *

A Togruta female and a human female stood alone in a briefing room. The holoprojector was turned off, the lights dimmed. The only sound was the whirring of the machinery around them.

The lights came on briefly when a dark-haired young man from a planet the human female had once sent all her hopes to walked in. He gave his report.

There was silence for a moment.

"You're sure he said _Luke Skywalker_?" the Togruta asked.

The man nodded. "Absolutely, ma'am." He hesitated, eyes flicking to the woman. "If I may ask. . ."

The woman didn't miss a beat. "What is it, Lieutenant Darklighter?"

"This _Skywalker_. Why is the name so important?"

"To me or to you?"

The man responded, "It's not _important_ to me, just. . . familiar."

The woman and the Togruta exchanged a glance.

The Togruta stepped forward, her two lightsabers swinging on her belt. "Luke Skywalker's name is important because he shouldn't know it. As far as we knew, both he and his sister were unaware of the full truth of who they are."

"And who are they?"

No reply.

Darklighter answered his own question. "They're the twins who vanished from Tatooine ten years ago, aren't they? Why are they working for the Empire?"

The woman was staring at nothing, lost in thought. The Togruta lay a hand on her shoulder.

"I think, Lieutenant Darklighter," she said quietly, "you'll find out soon enough."


	16. Third Shadow

Leia watched her brother's shuttle land from a window high in the Imperial Palace, and barely dared to test their bond.

She could sense his. . . moroseness. . . from here, as well as a surprising—and paradoxical—blend of what felt like guilt and. . . resolve? She wasn't sure; she could barely unpick her own knotted emotions nowadays, let alone her brother's.

But whatever it was, it cleared slightly when she reached out to him. He reached back, and she felt herself relax, a smile tugging at the corners of her lips.

He reported back to Palpatine in the throne room. A few other courtiers were there, Mas Amedda, the guards, but Luke didn't even spare the onlookers a glance.

Palpatine made a curt motion, gesturing most of the courtiers away. They all filed out without delay; it did not do to keep the Emperor waiting.

Leia listened from her spot by the throne. In a moment, Luke would stand here and she would stand where he was, reporting on the events of the investigation so far. But. . .

Her brother was being oddly. . . stiff.

She could sense tension building, but she wasn't sure where.

Luke's words were hard and cold. His mind shuttered off. _Leia_ could barely sense the lies in his voice and through the Force; she very much doubted Palpatine could. Apparently he _did_ know how to shut his own emotions away when he needed to.

But she _did _sense the lie, and therein lay the question: what was he lying about?

What had actually happened?

"The operation went smoothly at first, my master," he said, kneeling. Leia didn't know why Palpatine was so intent on hearing this—it had been a routine, low-priority mission, meant to get Luke accustomed to working alone—but she suspected he had a reason. He _always_ had a reason. "I befriended the traitors, confirmed that I had all their names, then Pryce sprung her trap and caught them all. They were escorted to the cells and I returned to the dormitories to gather my things, believing the matter to be over."

Palpatine's fingers tapped slowly on the arm of his throne, one by one. "And yet it wasn't," he said unequivocally. "You failed."

"I didn't fail at anything, Master." The words were quiet, but with a core of steel. Leia was surprised; her brother was usually a lot more. . . pliant. . . when it came to facing down Palpatine. He was either recklessly righteous, or willing to compromise. There was no in between. "I did my job. Pryce made the mistake of interrogating Wren alone, and Wren beat the stuffing out of her. One can assume that she freed her comrades from there."

A strange flutter in the Force: a half-truth. Not a lie, but only through a technicality.

"I went looking for them"—flutter—"but the dormitories are far from the holding cells"—flutter—"and by the time I arrived in the hangar Captain Skerris had already flown in pursuit of them."

He lifted his chin. "I did everything I could."

"Indeed." Palpatine's tone was not charitable. "Perhaps you did. But it still wasn't enough."

"No, Master." Luke lifted his head from staring at the floor, and met Palpatine's yellow gaze straight on. "It wasn't."

His body was slightly tensed, his head turned to the side. He was bracing himself for the lightning, Leia realised.

Palpatine glanced at her—and perhaps he was considering it, even. "You are prepared to face the punishment for failure?"

Luke kept his gaze steady and drawled with borderline insolence, "Whatever my master deems fit."

"And your sister?"

Leia's gaze snapped up. Palpatine was gesturing to her with one gnarled hand, fingers curled. "If she punishes you for your failure? It is her future Empire you have let down; you have failed _her_ more than you have me, in allowing this threat to remain instead of crushing it here and now. What if _she_ punishes you, as she eventually will have to in the future?"

Luke met Leia's eye, and smiled. She smiled back.

Palpatine was a master manipulator. But at his core, he did not understand love at all.

Luke shifted his gaze back to Palpatine, the smile still on his face. "My loyalties lie where they always have."

Palpatine's hand twitched on the armrest.

Leia held her breath.

Luke's smile dropped.

Finally, after one long moment, Palpatine started to laugh.

He laughed for a while. Long enough for Luke to frown slightly, and exchange glances with Leia.

Then he said, "It appears this mission was good for you after all, my boy." He smiled broadly. "You've finally grown a spine."

Leia sucked in an angry breath at the perceived insult—the fact that she'd been snapping at Luke about his habitual deference to Vader a few weeks ago did _not_ mean Palpatine was allowed to—

But Luke just bowed his head, and made to get to his feet without being prompted. "Thank you, my master—"

"Your father would be proud."

Luke froze momentarily—Leia felt his flash of resentment—then finished rising. The corners of his lips were turned down, but he nodded in acknowledgement.

Leia watched his lips work, and knew he couldn't force the final _thank you_ out of his throat.

She stepped forward before he had to.

"Master," she said, "so, to summarise what we've found so far. . ."

* * *

Luke was impressed that Leia waited until they'd sat down in the speeder to head home before she came out with all of her questions.

She didn't start on the one he'd expected.

"So," she said, even as she piloted the speeder past a billboard, "the Sixth Sister came looking for you while you were away."

Jade? Luke frowned. "Why in the galaxy would she do that?"

"That was what I was going to ask you."

He frowned harder. "I helped her out a bit, but—"

Leia stopped the speeder so fast that without his reflexes, he'd have been hurled over the front and into the fathoms of Coruscant. "You _what_?"

"I gave her some of the information our spies had gathered on Phoenix Squadron! I got Thrawn off the case! That's all I did!"

She frowned herself, but relaxed slightly, and they continued onwards. "Why?"

"She needed help, and I figured we had nothing to lose. If it warms her up to us, that might be a potential ally we have in the Inquisitorius."

"The Inquisitors are Palpatine's creatures."

"Aren't we all?"

It was both the most offensive and the most sensible thing he'd ever said to her. "Point taken. But you know that's not what I meant."

He knew. He stayed silent.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

She hid it well, but there was hurt in her voice—and confusion. Distance.

Leia was perhaps the only person in the galaxy he didn't want to be distant from right now.

"You were away," he admitted. "And I wasn't sure enough about what was going on to say it over the comms, and risk someone listening in. And then you came back, from _Tatooine_, and—"

"I see."

He glanced at her. "So. . ."

"It's alright." She smiled a little, the neon sign they flew past lighting her teeth red, but then the smile dropped and she asked, "And now, are you gonna tell me what _actually_ happened at Skystrike?"

He flinched.

He felt her concern a moment later, but he waved it away. "I will," he promised. "I _want _to tell you. But. . . I think I need to process what happened myself, first." Shame flooded him: he didn't know if it was because he'd let them go, or because he hadn't done it sooner.

If he had, Rake might still be alive. . .

Leia was quiet for a moment. "You've been keeping a lot of secrets recently."

"I know. I'm sorry."

"I know you are." She let out a breath, and the shame inside him tripled. He knew that wasn't her intention—that if he said he needed to work things out on his own, she believed him—but it did anyway. "I just don't like that you have to."

Neither did he.

They were twins. They'd been inside each others' heads more than their own since before they were born. Working things out alone was as alien a concept to them as democracy, or righteous rebellion.

But things were changing rapidly now, and Luke didn't like how rapidly they were changing with them.

* * *

Leia weighed up the comlink in her hand and glanced at the contact information for the fifth time in as many minutes.

Contacting Tsabin—_Sabé_—would be risky. No, beyond that. It would be _treason_.

She supposed she could argue that she was still investigating every Rebel lead she had, but. . .

She had to do this, she reminded herself. If only to understand her enemy more: Sabé had been more than willing to answer her questions before, no doubt in her misguided and pointless—_utterly pointless_—attempt to _convert_ Leia, or some equally foolish crusade. It was ridiculous, of course, and doomed to fail, but Leia might as well take advantage of it.

Of course, she knew that _understanding her enemy _was not the reason she was doing this, but she didn't want to think about that.

Whatever had happened on Skystrike, Luke didn't want to talk about it in great depth. Or at all. And Leia wasn't used to the two of them keeping secrets from each other.

Whatever had happened, it was big, and _he was keeping it from her_.

Which was well within his rights (provided such a thing was not a threat to them all, as stated in Imperial law), but—

It was petty, and pointless, but—

She kind of wanted to keep something big from him in retaliation.

That still wasn't the reason she was doing this.

Neither of those reasons were.

Leia, as much as she wanted to be, wasn't ruthlessly analytical enough to push aside her personal biases for the former; she _certainly_ wasn't one to sink low enough for the latter.

But she didn't want to think about the real reason. Doubt was a weakness, when it was in oneself or one's allies; it was _especially_ a weakness when it was in one's own beliefs.

Her thumb hovered over the comlink, ready to type in the frequency and make the connection. She must have been sitting here for a solid half hour by now.

Luke was still snoring in the adjacent room, but he would wake soon. Her father was still storming through the _Devastator_ in orbit, but he would return soon. She was running out of time.

If she didn't do this now, she'd never do this at all.

Although her brother was currently ahead of her on that count, Palpatine did not call Leia _reckless_ for no reason. Before she knew it she'd typed in the frequency, and watched the comlink buzz with a detached sense of horror.

She could always hang up, she decided. Besides, who knew if Sabé would even answer—

_"Tsabin."_

So much for that hope.

Leia was silent for another few breaths—long enough for Sabé to deduce, _"Leia?"_

Well. She was smarter than Leia had given her credit for—or maybe Rebel agents were just used to short and sharp messages, to avoid Imperial detection, rather than several minutes of awkward silence.

". . .yes," Leia ground out finally, figuring that the more she stalled, the more Sabé thought it was her, anyway. She tried to take back control with, "I had some follow-up questions about Padmé Amidala," but her thumb still lingered on the button to disconnect the call. She could stop this at any moment.

But she didn't.

_"Hmm," _Sabé said, her voice betraying nothing. It both impressed and infuriated Leia at the same time. _"Well, I'd be happy to answer any reasonable questions you have." _The word _reasonable_ did not get past Leia; clearly if she asked any dangerous questions, Sabé would cut the call just as quickly as Leia could. _"Padmé was—"_

"This is less about the woman herself," Leia cut her off. She was getting restless, her leg bouncing, foot tapping on the floor. She got to her feet and started pacing her bedroom. Ten paces to the door; eight paces along to the refresher; six paces along the wall on the way back. "More about the Republic. Obviously I was not _alive_ at this time, and information about that government is. . . limited," _censored_, and even if Leia _did_ have the clearance to get past it, it had a heavy pro-Imperial slant anyway, "so I'd like to know more."

Sabé's voice was as calm as Senator Amidala's was in everything Leia had read or researched on her. _"What would you like to know?"_

Leia hesitated. "The Senate," she said finally. "How did they avoid corruption?" _Or did they, at all? _"Even in the Empire today, there are still corrupt governors and selfish, personal power plays, and that's _with_ one man vetting each person he thinks would be best for the job. How did the Republic manage it?" It wasn't like public elections were infallible.

Palpatine had got into power, after all.

_"Arguably, the problems with the Empire today are because absolute power corrupts absolutely. Not that Palpatine wasn't corrupt before, but any one person in power will inevitably favour themselves and their own interests—as well as their loved ones'—over other things that may perhaps demand their attention. _That's_ how corrupt people get into power in dictatorships; because they see how they can use it to their advantage, and their actions go ignored so long as they play to what the ruler wants."_

"I'm not talking about the flaws of the Empire," Leia snapped, a little too quickly. "That's treason." _And _this_ isn't?_

But really: she wasn't going to sit here and listen to Sabé insult her ability to lead justly. She was here to listen to logic, not Rebel propaganda.

But. . .

She sighed and observed, "You're saying that people are inherently selfish."

_"Everyone has selfishness to them, yes."_

"Which is why democracy doesn't work! People can't be relied upon to vote for the good of the whole, instead of the good of themselves!"

_"Isn't that better than having one person's selfish views rule a galaxy for two decades? And what evidence do you have that the Republic was so corrupt?"_

"They allowed slavery to thrive—"

Sabé almost seemed to laugh at that. _"And the Empire has not?"_

"It won't in the future," Leia insisted mutinously. "And I think the fact that half the galaxy got so sick of the Republic's hypocrisy and decided to withdraw, causing a galactic civil war the likes of which hadn't been seen for centuries, is pretty damning evidence against the idea that they _lacked corruption_."

_"I'm not saying the Republic wasn't corrupt. But who was it that orchestrated the Clone Wars?"_

Leia's thought process ground to a halt at that. _Palpatine._

"He— he used previous flaws to his advantage," she argued, "but he couldn't have exacerbated flaws that weren't already there. The Empire _is_ the best way—just not with _him_ at the head of it."

This was reckless, admitting to a near-complete stranger that she disagreed with Palpatine. It wasn't farfetched to extrapolate and assume a coup was in place, and if it got back to Palpatine. . .

But it wasn't like he didn't already know.

_"Are you sure?" _Sabé pressed. _"Because—"_

Leia disconnected the call.

Then she screamed.

Pent up rage inside her ripped through the room, rattling the window and stirring Luke from his sleep. A clumsy probe was directed at her; she waved it off. _I'm alright._

She just didn't want to argue with Sabé anymore. The woman was too calm, too rational in her arguments, and Leia was still wracked with self-doubt.

It occurred to her, staring at the comlink in her hand, that she'd never received an answer to her question.

* * *

Despite Leia's insistence that she was alright, the fact that she'd lost control enough to actually wake him was a sign she really _wasn't_. But Luke wasn't going to press.

She wasn't pressing him for the details she so desperately wanted, after all.

So he just sighed, and rolled over in bed, eyes still drooping closed. He knew he wasn't going to be able to sleep again—Leia was still a storm in human form in the adjacent room—so he didn't bother, and dragged himself to his feet.

He'd been napping a lot more than usual lately, but he was tired. Loyalty crises could do that to a person.

Coruscant twinkled at night, and Luke had always found it soothing to just stand out on the balcony in the relative quiet of darkness and watch the speeders zoom by. He remembered when he'd first come to this planet, ten years old and used to nothing but the isolation of Mustafar—and, presumably, Tatooine. It had felt like stepping into an echo chamber where all anyone could do was scream.

Eventually, Luke had learnt to shut out the thoughts of all the millions of beings who called Coruscant home, and shut out His Imperial Majesty right along with them. But night was still calming for him: as little as Coruscant ever slept, it was still a damn sight calmer than the day.

He lazily sank into the Force. Leia was a whirlwind behind him, as always. His father still loomed like a larger-than-life mynock on the _Devastator_ in orbit, on the other side of the planet. Palpatine was meditating in the Palace, but his attention wasn't directed towards Luke in any way. No one else was worth identifying; Luke just closed his eyes, losing himself in the rush and lull of the Force, ebbs and swirls, the light and the dark and—

The light.

His eyes flew open; he immediately scanned the buildings around him. There was a smudge of white on the landing pad opposite him that he was fairly sure wasn't supposed to be there. It was of a humanoid shape.

Another flash—_there_! That was definitely it. Someone who shone in the Force like a Jedi; they'd dropped their shields long enough for him to sense their presence, then ramped them back up again before he could sense much more than that.

He tentatively reached out to Leia behind him. She remained antsy, infuriated, on edge. She likely hadn't noticed.

But he had.

He reached for his lightsaber, the grip solid and comfortable in his hand. He allowed a small smile to curl his lips. Hunting a Jedi through Coruscant would be exactly what he needed right now, an escape from the doubts plaguing him. Maybe he should get Leia in on it; they could collaborate, make it a sport and regain some of the camaraderie they seemed to have lost—

The cool touch of the Jedi's mind against his. The words were barely whispered, but they stalled any thoughts in their tracks.

_Amidala sends her regards, Luke Skywalker._

He froze.

His heart beat faster, and faster, and faster. Force. Oh _Force_, he knew he'd been stupid to say that to Wren and her defectors; of course this was happening, what else had he thought? Of course they'd want to assess him, and what?

Turn him?

Did they think he was interested in defecting?

No. The thought had genuinely never even crossed his mind; his place was here. At the head of the Empire. This Jedi was gravely mistaken if they thought he was interested in having any sort of conversation with them _or_ Amidala?

_Even if she's your mother?_

Luke pushed the thought away. It didn't matter. He wouldn't talk to the Jedi.

But. . .

What harm would it do? If he was so certain that he wouldn't be swayed, then he ought to lead the Jedi on, talk to them, get as much information from them as possible. . . then kill them. That was what his kind _did_ to Jedi.

_His kind. _Luke snorted. As if he and Leia _had_ a kind.

But talking to the Jedi wouldn't hurt. As far as he knew, it could either be Bridger, Jarrus or Tano. He could take the first two in a fight easily enough—his father was fiercely proud of it, and said so, though that meant less to Luke now than it used to. He wasn't sure how well he could fight Tano, but he was sure he could hold her off until Leia arrived with backup.

_Who are you? _Luke asked, just in case.

No reply.

Luke huffed. Well. Alright then.

He made for the landing pad, assuring Leia that he'd be back soon when she shot him a questioning probe. Then he took off in the speeder and brought it around to the landing pad he'd seen the Jedi on.

He didn't know which senator or governor or other member of the elite owned this particular starscraper, but its lights were dark, with no one to be sensed inside. There were no security sensors either; the only sound to be heard after he disembarked was his own footsteps.

He could sense the Jedi somewhere down, on his left. He squinted, pulling on the dark side to enhance his vision and awareness, then spotted it: a maintenance walkway wrapped around the side of the building. There were no landing pads nearby, but steel struts expanded out from the skyscraper's main body a few levels below him, where the prestigious, coveted residences gave way to the sort of abandoned building works that were everywhere on Coruscant.

_A planet of ghosts, _he thought.

Then he shook the thought away, pulled on the Force again, and jumped.

He landed squarely on one of the steel beams criss-crossing between the buildings. It rang underneath him; for one moment he was staring over the edge, straight down, Coruscant's five thousand levels dropping away below him. It was always dizzying when that happened.

Then he reminded himself there was still a Jedi in his vicinity. He rolled to his feet, and jumped again.

He landed on the next strut a little less elegantly. He rolled, pulling feverishly on the Force to minimise damage, but his knees still got banged up pretty badly. He settled for a few muttered curses.

He got to his feet again.

His two massive jumps had covered the distance more than effectively. He was in line with the Jedi now, standing on a strut that hugged the building opposite the Jedi's, and could make out their silhouette across the gap, though they still wore a dark enough robe for it to be a challenge.

They stood for a moment, staring at each other across the gap.

It was like a scene out of a painting: one figure standing in shade, one in Coruscant's nighttime glow. Luke had no doubt his black outfit would have blended into the shadows just as effectively as her robe did, but he wasn't wearing a hood.

As it was, he stood near a street lamp. The yellow light bled strange patterns onto the metal he stood on; it gleamed off his hair like a beacon. The Jedi could see every inch of him clearly, while he could only make out a vague shape of them.

Strange. In this painting, the one who stood in the light was the furthest from it, while the one who stood in the shadows had no fear of the dark.

Once it became clear Luke wouldn't come any closer if he didn't know what he was getting into, the Jedi's Force sense became almost. . . amused.

_If you insist_, they acquiesced, and lowered their hood.

Luke squinted, watching white montrals emerge, then a brown-orange face, until he was certain it was a Togruta standing all those metres in front of him. There was another few moments as he automatically categorised other pertinent details about the figure—their height, their age, the twin lightsabers he could see at their belt—but logically he already knew those things. He knew exactly who this was.

Of the few Jedi still alive, how many of them were Togruta, after all?

Ahsoka Tano grinned and shouted, "So? Are you coming over here?"

Yes. Yes, if only because it might give him a chance to fight and maybe even capture one of the few Rebels he'd heard his father rant about so much, who his father despised with everything in himself, a person whose capture would make his father proud—

No.

Making his father proud wasn't his priority, anymore.

And even if he did capture her, what then? What was to stop her from spilling the truth of what Luke had done at Skystrike, and leave him to face Palpatine's wrath for his treason?

Because it _had_ been treason. Luke accepted that now. It was hardly the first treasonous thing he'd done in the past few months.

He eyed the jump, and took a few steps back. He'd never managed to jump the distance of one Coruscant building to another—at least, not in Imperial City. In some of the industrial districts the buildings were more cramped together, and he could play hopscotch with them _there_, but here. . .

It was a manageable distance, he decided. Especially with the steel strut giving him a running start.

He took a few steps back, and made the jump.

He'd been wrong.

The jump was still too short. The moment he noticed he panicked, more thoughts than there were levels below him flashing through his mind in an instant—

He searched for a place to catch himself, something to hang onto—there, a rickety ramp; there, a possible handhold in a beam, but at this speed he'd tear his arms out of their sockets—

He slowed in mid air. The cool touch of the Force made him roll his eyes.

Of course.

Tano's hands were out, her brows furrowed in concentration. She brought him over the safety railings around the walkway, and set him down gently.

He got to his feet as quickly as possible and folded his arms across his chest, desperately trying not to flush. This. . . was not how he'd wanted it to go.

He narrowed his eyes at her. "Ahsoka Tano."

She only smiled. "Luke Skywalker." Something about the way she said it felt like destiny. Like she'd been waiting for this for a long time.

She eyed the strut he'd just jumped from, then flicked her gaze back to him. "Well, you're certainly as reckless as Anakin once was."

There was so much to unpack in that sentence—someone _actually using_ his father's name, the familiarity she said it with—but what he snapped was, "Don't compare me to him."

She appeared. . . taken aback. . . by that. "I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't realise you hated him."

"I don't!" His tone was only getting angrier, and the dark side responded to it. It swirled at his heels, dragged the temperature around them down to a nipping cold. Goosebumps rose on his arms.

Tano held her hands up, and he didn't think he was imagining the worry in her voice as she said, "Alright. I'm sorry for assuming anything." She dropped her hands and observed him for a minute. "You're. . . darker than I thought. You felt lighter earlier."

"I am not _light_."

"Do you love your sister?"

He scoffed, disgusted with this. "Of course I do, Jedi scum. That's none of your—"

"Not a Jedi."

He blinked. "What?"

"I'm not a Jedi. I'd have thought you would know that," she smiled, somewhat wryly, "I told your father in no uncertain terms. Pretty dramatically, I might add."

"I don't care," he said. He _had_ known that, and now he berated himself for his slip—hadn't he debated throwing that in Wren's face only a few days ago? "Stay out of my family business."

After a moment, he processed that this woman _had_ just saved his life, so maybe it would just be civil to—

"I'm not gonna collect the debt, Luke, don't worry." He scowled—he doubted she'd read his thoughts, so the fact that he'd lost control of his facial expression, or become so predictable, was an undesirable one.

"And as for your _family business_. . ." she trailed off, looking at him hard. "Your mother sent me to talk to you. _You_ contacted _her_, after all."

He half-turned away, arms still folded stubbornly. "That was nothing. I'm not gonna. . . defect, or whatever you hope will come from this. I'm not even thinking about it."

"You committed treason by letting those pilots go."

"I was doing the only right thing. They didn't want to stay in the navy under corrupt officials who ordered them to break Imperial protocol. They can go fight a doomed cause if they really want, and when they get caught on an unarmed vessel and _don't_ get fired on, _as per Imperial protocol_, they'll realise the truth, and be forced to live with the burden of what they've done."

"And what have they done?"

He fidgeted. "Turned their lasers on the best government this galaxy has seen."

"You don't believe that."

"The best _form_ of government," he continued stubbornly. "Palpatine is a fluke."

"And you think the galaxy would be better off without him?"

He paused, but— "Of course."

"The Rebellion—"

"No."

To his surprise, she laughed. "Well, I can't say I wasn't hoping. But I'm not surprised."

He dropped his arms from across his chest and just fiddled with a loose thread at the edge of his sleeve. "Why did you come here, Tano?"

"You contacted us."

"That was an experiment."

"To see if Amidala was who you thought she was?" Tano tilted her head. "She is."

"Padmé Amidala?"

"Your mother."

All the breath left him. He _known_—at least, he'd thought that he'd known—but hearing it out loud like that. . . "You know we've been hunting for this sort of information for years."

"And what are you gonna do with it now?" She smirked a little. "Go to Palpatine?"

Luke said nothing.

After the silence got unbearable, he sighed. "You never told me what you wanted."

"I told you, I was sent here."

"What does _Amidala_ want, then?"

"She wants to know her son."

The words were quiet, but Luke flinched anyway.

"Then why didn't she come herself?" he challenged. His hands trembled; he clenched them into fists at his sides.

Ahsoka folded her arms. "The leader of the Rebellion, coming to the very heart of the Empire? You know exactly why." Her voice softened again. "But she still wants to meet you and your sister."

"Then why did she dump us on Tatooine when we were born?" The words were harsh; they ripped out of his throat with little input from his actual mind. "It didn't exactly look like she wanted to play happy families when she left us to rot in poverty, did it?"

Ahsoka hesitated, at that. "You remember Tatooine? We were under the impression you didn't."

"As of a few weeks ago," he ground out, resolutely ignoring the implication that they'd been watching them for a while now, _maybe his entire life_, "I do." _I gave Wren the name Luke Skywalker for a reason._

Before she could analyse it in any more detail, he pushed on, "So she didn't want us when we needed her, but the moment we _don't_, she tries to waltz right back in?"

"There were. . . extenuating circumstances when you were born—"

Luke turned away before she could finish.

"She wants to know you, Luke," Tano said quietly. "She didn't get to be there during your childhood, and she wants to know the person you've become."

Luke laughed.

It sounded ugly, even to his own ears. He took two sharp steps away from Tano and yanked his lightsaber off his belt, lighting it in one fluid motion. The crimson blade always seemed to hum more angrily than Jedi lightsabers; it cast his face in red light.

He said, "I doubt very much she wants to know the person I've become."


	17. The Imperial Cog

The next day dawned bright and early, and unusual in that for once Luke, Leia _and_ Vader were required to attend this new meeting.

The tension in the speeder on the ride there could have been cut with a knife. Neither of the twins had spoken to their father except in passing since his. . . revelation, and there didn't seem much to say.

"It would be helpful," Vader said—Leia cringed at the sight of Luke's knuckles whitening at the controls, but she clenched her fists just as tightly—"if one of you could summarise what this important meeting is about."

Luke kept staring straight ahead, but they could both feel his attention flick behind him in the Force. "You didn't read the report?"

Leia didn't know why he was surprised. What their father thought relevant or not was a thrilling saga of which reports they had to summarise to him mind-to-mind today, so that he didn't accidentally look foolish in front of some senator or choke _another_ politician important to Palpatine's plans.

"No," Vader admitted. "I did not want to."

Everything he said was with such gravity that the flippancy in his tone made Luke pause. Exchange a glance with Leia. They'd heard him fiercely protective, intense, sarcastic—but it was rare for him to be _flippant_.

Luke relaxed, slightly. It was a sign he wanted to make amends, if nothing else, and Leia knew her brother would never be able to hold a grudge against Vader for too long. Even if his hero worship had died with their ignorance, he was still his father.

"It's a briefing," he said, a slight fond smile in his voice. "Palpatine, Tarkin"—Leia was glad to sense equal distaste in their father for the man to their own—"and some of the other important moffs will be there. It's about Empire Day."

"A waste of time."

"Agreed." Leia kicked back to plant her feet on the seat in front of her, near Luke's elbow, and slouched down in her own seat. "But they're gonna unveil the _Executor_—"

"Convenient," Vader muttered, "that the _moment_ I clear all the spies from the _Devastator_ he assigns me a new flagship."

"—and some other stuff. Project Stardust? I don't think we have clearance to know the details about that yet. But the _Executor_ had been in production much longer than the _Devastator_'s been clean."

"He accelerated the production once he realised he had no idea what was happening on my flagship."

"_We_ accelerated the production, Father. We were the ones at Kuat." There was tension in Luke's voice again, and Leia couldn't blame him. Affection or not, Vader had betrayed their trust. He needed to earn it back, and accusing them of conspiracy was not the way to do it.

He didn't back down, though. "And who was it that sent you there?"

That. . . was a valid point.

"Who was it who didn't bat an eyelid when Tarkin commandeered the system for himself, no doubt keeping tabs on and codes to every military vessel that leaves it?"

Also a valid point, but Leia would die before she admitted it.

Luke had no such reservations. Conceding to Vader was his specialty, after all. "Alright. But the ceremony with the _Executor_'s only a part of the celebrations. It's the eighteenth Empire Day—the Empire is an _adult_, has _stood the test of time_ and all that—and Palpatine wants to go all out on the celebrations."

"It's your eighteenth birthday, as well."

_That_ mellowed Leia slightly as well. Their father hated Empire Day—it was the day their mother had _supposedly_ died—and while he did make sure to shower them with gifts for their birthday, he was always closed off and detached.

He wouldn't talk about the topic unless the Emperor forced him to. He disliked mere mentions of it. Half the time he had to lock himself in his hyperbaric chamber and leave them to their own devices for the day, for fear that in his anger and self-loathing he might unwittingly hurt them.

If _he_ was bringing it up _voluntarily_. . . he was trying.

"Wow," Luke said, "I wonder what you'll get us as a present."

Vader's finger sprung out of his glove and jabbed the back of Luke's head. "Neither of you have ever worn the capes I gave you last year. Nor the year before that."

"We wore them to that stupid social function for Palpatine's birthday!"

"I do not mean to _parties_. They are not meant for looking _stylish and sophisticated_ in any formal setting. They are meant for looking intimidating at any given moment, _especially_ in front of one's enemies." He leaned forward to pat Luke on the head. The motion had the usual jerky uncertainty to it that all of Vader's affection did. "Something you need _dearly_, my son."

"Sure. Because I look _terrifying _when I accidentally slice off a portion of my own cape because it got in the way."

"They are not impractical if you wear them correctly. You simply need practice. I did not have them made blaster-proof, fireproof, _as well as_ 'looking good', or whatever you are so hung up on, just for them to sit on the floor of your wardrobe for a year."

Luke opened his mouth to defend himself, then closed it again. Leia laughed.

She nodded at the Palace as they pulled onto the landing pad. "We're here."

"One more thing," Vader said.

They paused. Leia waited a moment before prompting, a little sharply, "What?"

"Palpatine is overseeing some executions immediately after this briefing," he said. Leia wondered fleetingly how he'd known that if he hadn't even known what the briefing was about—then thought about it. There was a good chance he _had_ known all along, but just wanted to get a conversation going. "I propose that during the time in which we know we will be unoccupied, we should return to the apartment and discuss that project we are working on."

Luke and Leia exchanged a look, but nodded. "Alright."

"Good." Vader tilted his helmet towards the entrance. "Should we go in?"

* * *

Luke was distracted throughout most of the meeting, his encounter with Tano burning a hole in his mind. She'd rattled off a comlink frequency to contact her by if he ever wanted to _know more about his mother_—Luke _really hated_ that she'd clocked onto the thing he was most desperate for—and while he couldn't remember it off the top of his head, he knew that if he drew on the Force to enhance his memory he'd certainly be able to.

He almost did, there and then in the briefing, but then Tarkin said something, they were all reciting _Long live the Emperor_, and they were dismissed.

Luke hadn't taken in a word of what had been said. He hoped they'd send out the scripts for the meeting—he'd need them, or he'd have no idea of the timetable.

The speeder ride back was less tense than the one there. Their father was flying this time, allowing Luke to sit in the back and let his mind drift.

Leia could sense his mood, the state of turmoil that seemed to dog them constantly nowadays. She left him alone.

Then they arrived at home, into the living room with the certainty of privacy, and his father started talking about the future of the galaxy.

"My power base on the _Devastator _is firm and unquestionable," he began, standing and staring out over Coruscant, the way the sun glinted off the steel spires. No holos or visual representations of this informal briefing; no damning evidence to be found. Vader was telling them the important things, in the trust that they would remember. " Admiral Montferrat is loyal to me and me alone, and his crew would follow him anywhere."

"_All_ of them?" Leia asked, looking skeptical.

"Naturally some of the newer recruits, as well as the more cowardly ones, are loyal only to themselves, but they are too afraid of me to turn traitor. Any informants are dealt with swiftly by the rest of the crew."

Luke frowned. "So they're afraid of you. Is fear the only thing keeping them in line? What about me and Leia?"

"The two of you have a certain notoriety as my children, and as participants in the bloodbath that was the Kuat operation, as well as a few others—"

Luke's hackles rose. "_None_ of those were our fault."

"I agree with you, son. But nevertheless, you _are_ implicated in the minds of the general public, if only on those occasions, as the ones who re-established the peace. Overall, the two of you have cultivated a reputation for effectiveness, fairness, and a lack of corruption. Many of the stormtroopers, pilots and low-ranking officers would follow you for only one of those traits, let alone all of them." He turned, and—in a surprisingly affectionate gesture—rested his hand on Leia's shoulder.

His voice was undeniably proud as he said, "You are the model of what an Imperial leader should be."

Shame burned the backs of Luke's eyes, his throat, as he thought of his conversation with Tano just the previous night. He made sure to keep his shields steady.

Funny—he thought he sensed a strengthening of Leia's shields, as well. He figured he might know why.

_You should tell her. _About Skystrike, about Tano. She'd been voicing Rebel sympathies; she might understand.

But suggesting that the Rebels weren't all bad was a far cry from committing treason, as he'd now done. Twice.

He'd let those pilots go. He'd met with a Rebel spy and made no attempt to capture her.

He was a traitor.

His father remained oblivious to his turmoil, too wrapped up in his spiel of grand coups and greatness. He turned around to look out over Coruscant again, his back straight, and continued.

"I have been fielding officers whose loyalty is either assured or probable to assign to the _Executor_. Low ranks at first, until their superiors prove themselves incompetent and face their due punishment for it."

Luke didn't quite manage to keep the wince off his face there. He'd given up trying to justify what Vader did to his officers—no man was perfect in everything he did, he had been forced to learn, and certainly not his father—and now he had no excuse for him.

_Executioner._

It was murder, executing someone for a mistake they made. There was no need to turn the military—_the galaxy_—against them if they didn't have to.

Vader was still talking. "Captain Piett of the _Accuser_ is one such officer. General Veers of Death Squadron will require no reassignment. There are others, of course, and I will provide you both with a list, but those two are the most senior." He tilted his helmet over his shoulder to cast them a wry look. "I trust you know not to allow such a list to fall into anyone's hands but your own?"

The twins just rolled their eyes in response.

Vader kept speaking, his words hard and unyielding in their certainty. Plans; battle formations; Star Destroyers _Imperial-_ and _Venator_\- and even _Executor_-class, new and old, in action or still in production; odds calculated and recalculated by a droid who'd promptly had its memory wiped afterwards; potential bases of power, planets with enough resources to sustain an armada and governors who would back Vader, Luke and Leia over Palpatine.

There was so much information, and there was only one thing Luke could think of:

This was real.

This was happening.

His father's plans laid out baldly in front of him, the amount of detail and dedication and destruction in them. . . He'd been planning this for _years_. Pooling his resources, hiding it from them, lying to Palpatine's face. He'd been spinning dozens of plates at once with new allies, old allies, possible allies; now, in fifteen months at _most_, those plates would come crashing to the floor, they'd pick up the shards and drive one into Palpatine's blackened, shrivelled heart. Perhaps even two, for good measure.

This was _real_.

This was not a vague idea. This was not power play, the kicks and natural progression of dissatisfaction between a master and an apprentice. His father was preparing for a civil war that would dwarf the Rebellion's petty squabbles, on a scale the likes of which hadn't been seen since Vader himself had ended the last one.

Luke had known it was serious. He'd known it would never be the same again. The galaxy's fate had been sealed the moment Palpatine had placed that transmitter in Vader's suit, the moment he'd electrocuted Luke and Leia. . .

The moment Vader had found them on Tatooine.

For better or for worse, the galaxy would shift on its axis within the year, and Luke's family would be at the origin.

And he was terrified.

* * *

Empire Day approached fast. In only a few short weeks they were boarding the _Devastator_ to make the trip to Kuat again, for the first time since they'd quelled the uprising months ago. When they were shown the quarters they'd been assigned for the trip, there was the customary scramble for who got the top bunk bed—Luke lost, which he was very grumpy about—before their comlinks chimed, indicating they needed to be on the bridge as soon as possible.

Considering the comlink went off during their scuffle, it was a few moments before they were collected enough to answer it.

They went to the bridge, as commanded, and Leia had to avoid wrinkling her nose at the dignitaries she was meant to greet there. She could sense the bridge crew's tension in the pits, and she couldn't blame them; having Tarkin, her father, _and_ the Emperor in the general vicinity, ready to snap at them for the slightest mistake, weren't the most desirable working conditions after all.

But nor was having to make small talk with the viper himself.

"Ah, Miss Leia," Tarkin greeted smoothly. "I had hoped I would see you here—I know you had your doubts over what my leadership has made of you and your brother's fine work, and I hope that these displays will assuage them."

Over Tarkin's shoulder, Leia could see Palpatine watching them. He caught her eye and nodded a little, smiling, then turned away.

That meant she could say whatever she wanted, and he would simply be amused.

Alright then.

"I highly doubt that, Tarkin," she said. Her voice was as cold as the depths of hyperspace they now hurtled through. "Your placement of Governor Vilrein—"

"_Director_ Vilrein, now," he corrected. "I kept her on. I recognise her talent for understanding the economics and the science of what Kuat is so famous for, as I know you did, but I feel she was better suited to a more hands-on role than the one you gave her. Handing someone with such negligible political experience so much power over perhaps one of the most vital systems in the Empire seemed. . . unwise."

_I'd consider it wiser to give that power to a woman who served as the previous governor's aide for fifteen years and has the loyalty of over half the workers than to give it to a megalomaniac whose only claim to fame is his brutal massacres during the Clone Wars_, she wanted to bite back. But she thought Palpatine might object to her going _that_ far.

Tarkin was still a massively influential man, after all.

Besides, what had she expected? The galaxy was _under the control_ of a megalomaniac. Like-minded people thrived.

"And yet I've seen the reports. _Director_ Vilrein has constantly lobbied you for more funding in the previous months. She has explained quite clearly that without it, there is the risk that many of Kuat's projects will not be finished on schedule, and yet you refuse that?" If Vilrein was still governor, she wouldn't _need_ that permission—she could green light it of her own accord. "Instead you funnel it all away to this. . . other project." She couldn't speak of Project Stardust openly like this, but he got her message.

"Miss Leia." He had the gall to place a hand on her shoulder. She glared at him until it was clear that if he kept it there a second longer, it would _not_ be good for his health. He smirked slightly as he retracted it. "I cannot tell you more right now, but I assure you: after this visit, you _will_ understand why this _project_ requires—indeed, deserves—infinitely more attention than anything Kuat could produce. Even your father's precious _Executor_."

She lifted her chin and said coolly, "I very much doubt that, Tarkin. Will _this_ project even be ready on time?"

"It is my estimate—"

"I do not care about your estimates. You are not a scientist. You are a politician pretending to be a scientist. And most of all, you are a man who does not care specifically about what he is doing. _That_ is why you are unfit for this job."

Oh, Palpatine was going to _kill_ her.

She heard a snickering behind him. Quiet, subtle snickering, but the Force allowed her to zero in on the man responsible for it. One of the directors, if she was correct: he wore a white cape and gloves, and held himself with all the rigidity of a man who desperately wanted to be here, but knew intrinsically that he simply did not fit it. He was watching their interaction with a barely restrained delight, eyes fixed on Tarkin.

Anger froze the governor's face; he couldn't do anything meaningful to Leia right here, right now, but she sensed it. She _saw_ it, in the way he bit back in the only way he could: belittlement.

He patted her shoulder, quickly enough that she didn't have time to rip his arm from its socket before it was back at his side again.

"I suppose you must be forgiven for such naive things," he said. "You are only seventeen—you will understand soon enough. You did a good job with the system while it was in your hands, and you had only the best interests at heart"—Leia was going to _murder him_—"but one cannot be right _all_ the time."

It was a clumsy blow, almost insulting to himself that he would ever have to resort to such a crude, rudimentary jab. But it worked.

She wanted to rip his tongue out of his head. She wanted tear his still-beating heart out of his chest. She wanted to unleash her rage and watch him _shatter_, like a dropped clay pot: unremarkable and mundane in every way, _in no way unique_, and now just useless. Now just a warning for the folly of clumsiness, and of _stepping where you shouldn't_.

But she couldn't do that.

Not yet.

So she just smiled. "You are absolutely correct, Governor," she said, sickly sweet. "And I look forward to the day where you realise just how _rarely_ you _are_ right."

She slipped away to find Luke before he could reply.

* * *

Mingling with the favoured servants of the Empire grew tiresome eventually, and Luke was forced to retreat to the sidelines, just watching things play out. His sister's conversation with Tarkin was _very_ amusing.

After a few hours had passed, the dignitaries finally returned to their assigned quarters on the ship, leaving the bridge mostly empty. He could feel the pit crew's relief, and mirrored it with his own; he just wanted to take a break from this.

He'd always known that he despised interacting with the court, and the elite. But now, thoughts of the coup whirling around his mind, he was beginning to realise just how much he _hated_ the upper echelons of the Empire he fought so hard to protect.

Was _this_ who he was protecting?

He let his gaze sweep around the few who were left. Director. . . Krennic—yes, that was his name, listed in associated with the enigmatic _Project Stardust_—was standing alone at the viewport, staring out at the stars. Luke had no interest in making contact with him, and moved his gaze on: to this governor, that governor, this moff, this commander—

All the while, one thought dogged him:

How many of them would even blink at firing on an unarmed transport?

How many would have the courage to do what so many Rebels had done, and decided that from what they'd seen, the Empire was _wrong_? _They_ were wrong, of course, but with _this lot_ as the bright leaders of the galaxy, who could blame them for thinking that way?

Their coup might need to erase more than just Palpatine. Tarkin they'd always planned on doing away with, out of sheer spite if nothing else, but if the others were just as much a part of the corruption. . .

He sighed. He didn't know.

His attempt to go to Skystrike and _figure out_ all these complicated ideas had backfired on him spectacularly; now he didn't really know anything. He was even more lost than before.

And Tano's words about his mother haunted him.

If she really wanted to know them—if she really _cared_ all that much, enough to risk one of her best spies and Force-users to make conversation with him—then why had they been left on Tatooine?

Luke's memories of the planet were clearer from use, now, and he treasured what he could remember of his aunt and uncle. They'd been good people. They had loved him and Leia. But he also distinctly remembered believing himself an orphan.

Maybe Owen and Beru hadn't known. They probably hadn't; Luke doubted Kenobi, or whoever it was who had taken them to Tatooine, would've wanted to risk them not being accepted because the couple thought there was a danger to themselves. But that still begged the question: Why hadn't their mother let them know she was alive?

Why had she made them grow up like that, until Luke had _jumped_ at the chance to know a man claiming to be his father, and his aunt and uncle had been executed for it?

He didn't know. There was a lot of stuff he didn't know, and he was starting to get a headache from it all.

He had better go to sleep, he decided. The. . . gathering, or whatever this was, had petered out by now, and no one would fault him if he slipped away. If his father did, then he could just whip out the thousand times Luke had covered for _him_ at one gala or another, but he didn't think he _would_ object.

Things were still too delicate between them for _that_.

So he snuck away, moved all of Leia's stuff off the top bunk bed and stole it for himself, and slept until the next day cycle. His sister was not happy with him when she came in, but by that point he was so deeply asleep she didn't have the heart to wake him.

* * *

The few days of the trip _after_ that were spent tailing after his father. It wasn't studying under him in any official capacity—the Emperor still vetoed that, probably in hopes of preventing a coup that was already in the works—but it wasn't like there were any other duties demanding his attention. Nor was there any limit to where he could go on the ship. Leia spent most of the time mingling with the aristocracy in the officers' lounge, doing. . . whatever it was politicians did, but Luke spent that same time on the bridge.

Palpatine implied, in his faux-grandfatherly tone, that he might get bored.

Luke did not get bored.

He observed the pit officers at work, subtly enough that they didn't notice he was observing them. He stood at his father's right hand for hours on end, listening to every report given to him and every response he made. Often, if Vader sensed his confusion, he would calmly explain the reasons for each decision over their bond, until Luke understood.

Sometimes it would take a while for the understanding to click. Even hours, sometimes. They'd both stand at the viewport, both with their hands clasped behind their back, both half-watching the swirls of hyperspace while they commiserated, heads bent slightly together.

But. . . there was an awkwardness, as well. Luke pretended not to notice the way his father answered any and all questions with a zealousness that betrayed his eagerness, just as Vader pretended not to notice the suspicion in Luke's mind, the way that it was closed off to him in a way it never had been before. Luke was far more relaxed around him again by the time Kuat loomed beyond the viewport, but. . . he still didn't _trust_ him. Not the way he had before.

He didn't know if he ever would.

His father had stolen his memories, then lied to him about it for ten years. He doubted he could ever forgive that entirely.

But he enjoyed himself.

He wished Palpatine would let him train under his father properly. This— this was a _dream come true_ for him.

The bridge crew got used to his presence, as well. They even reported to him. Whenever his father was otherwise occupied—in meditation, in conversation with Montferrat, in conversation with _Palpatine_—they no longer hovered, or interrupted, their fear staining the Force. Oh, they were still _afraid_ of Luke himself, but less so than his father; Luke wasn't sure whether he was flattered or insulted.

He thought of his father's _executions_. He'd witnessed one on this trip: a poor aide had tried to approach him immediately after a conversation with Palpatine that seemed to have plunged him into a bad mood. Probably the yearly diatribe about Luke's mother.

The aide's death had been quick. Luke had looked away as the distinct _thump_ of his body hit the ground.

Vader had sensed his discomfort. _He was reporting his own, unforgivable failure, _he informed him, disapproval shooting over their bond, though there was something. . . defensive. . . about it.

Luke hadn't flinched. He no longer cared nearly as much about his father's disapproval as he used to. If anything, now his father had to care about _his_.

So he didn't bother answering. He had just turned away to watch the stars shoot past.

His father was not as close to perfection as a military commander—_or any person at all_—could get. If he was, he wouldn't have hurt Luke so badly—would have _known_ that keeping such a secret risked tearing everything apart.

So he might well be _wrong_ about his casual cruelty, and Luke might well be right.

So he quietly suggested the bridge crew to give Luke their reports and paperwork, and Luke be the messenger to give them to his father. If only because he was one person his father could not and would not hurt.

Vader was. . . amused. . . at this, he knew. Amused, and slightly apprehensive, but he wasn't about to say anything to push him away further.

Luke continued to keep the crew out of his father's rage. _Mercy fosters loyalty_, he thought. Things settled into a dream-like monotony, a naturalness to it that calmed his doubts somewhat.

Then they arrived on Kuat.

The dream passed.

The planet hung beyond the viewport, and he somehow knew that this small paradise for himself had met its end. It had been a fleeting journey. Here was the destination.

But on the planet—and on the construction facilities in orbit—he still didn't stop mulling over some of the thoughts he'd had while he stood there, staring out at the stars.


	18. Fourth Shadow

Kuat looked much the same as it had when Leia had last arrived here—minus, that is, the explosions. It seemed relatively calm now, the manmade construction ring right the way around the planet buzzing with activity, the cloudy, greenish atmosphere below it undisturbed.

So. Tarkin had managed to prevent any more revolts from breaking out, if nothing else.

They were given the tour of the ring, and the shipyards contained within it; for all that she'd spent a good few weeks here less than a year ago, Leia was glad for the opportunity to reorient herself. She was also glad for the opportunity to judge how well Tarkin had been doing, in his new, additional leadership role.

So far, he seemed to be emulating his beloved Emperor to the next level.

Leia remembered just after Luke left for Skystrike, when she'd gone to visit the central power grid herself in an attempt to inspect its security. She remembered what she'd thought then, of the fear and the crushed spirits and the _desolation_ she'd sensed.

She remembered wondering why these people would ever support them, if all they did was work and starve whether it was under the Republic _or_ the Empire. Abstract, far away concepts like senates and humanitarian trips and _security_ did not matter when you were living ration to ration; they only mattered if they allowed you to live, _happier_, for one more day.

Vilrein, Leia remembered, had agreed with her on this. She'd won most of the workers' personal loyalty by visibly petitioning Governor Trite for better pay and working conditions. According to the reports she'd sent Leia before Tarkin's politicking, their pay still wouldn't be enough for them to live _easily_, but they didn't have to worry about starving, or their children starving. It still motivated them to keep their jobs, because it was better pay than they'd get elsewhere in the galaxy for the same amount of labour, but—

Then Tarkin had waltzed in with his thin smiles and budget cuts, and all the credits which _had_ been going into the workers' pockets were mysteriously sent off to _Project Stardust_ instead.

And Leia could see the effects.

The workers had been given hope, had experienced what it was like to be treated well under Vilrein. . . and then Tarkin had ripped it away.

And they were _angry_.

She could sense it as their procession moved down the walkways, overlooking the thousands and thousands of droids, humans, other species toiling away at constructing the behemoth instruments of war. Palpatine had a sickening smile on his face as he watched them be built.

Luke was smiling as well. Leia knew it was because he just really liked ships, and the size and scale of these impressed him, but she elbowed him in the ribs anyway.

"And this," Tarkin said, as if he'd personally overseen everything that was arrayed out before them instead of lounging around on cushy Coruscant like the no-good, lazy bastard he was— "is the crowning achievement of Kuat Drive Yards. The jewel in the sceptre." He waved his hand with a flourish. If it was anyone else—well, perhaps not Palpatine—Leia would have enjoyed the theatrics; instead she just wrinkled her nose. "The _Executor_."

_That_ got her attention. She glanced out of the viewport, and couldn't contain her shock.

Logically, she knew it had to be massive. Star Destroyers in general were massive; they needed to be, to contain all that fire power and all those people.

But the _Executor_. . .

It would be. . . difficult, to say the least, to describe the scene before her. It struck a chord inside her as reminiscent of when she was living on Mustafar: she and Luke were eight or nine, and just starting to learn how to use the Force. Levitation had naturally been the first thing they studied, and she remembered distinctly how her father had handed them credit chip after credit chip, one at a time, and they had made them dart around the room like starfighters.

She remembered, too, a stuffy old book Vader had had in his vast collection of Sith artefacts. She couldn't remember what it was about, but she and Luke had been fascinated by its sheer _size_: taller than the tip of her middle finger to her elbow, and thicker than her hand span.

She remembered setting herself the challenge to levitate it. When she'd succeeded with that, she'd set herself the challenge to levitate that _and_ her father's credit chips.

_That_ was the image the _Executor_ recalled: tiny, insignificant Star Destroyers hanging above the infinitely larger Super Star Destroyer, like bright credit chips hanging above the biggest book Leia could imagine.

But Star Destroyers weren't the size of credit chips. Once upon a time, they'd been too large for her mind to comprehend as well.

Her moment of stunned silence at the sight had gone unnoticed: most others in the entourage were similarly awed. Luke still _was_; she could see his lips moving, muttering to himself—calculations? Statistics? Estimated prowess in battle? She didn't know; she liked ships well enough, but her brother was on a whole other level.

The measured clip of footsteps approaching down the hallway turned her attention to the newcomer.

Tan skin, short hair—the moment she registered who she was, she straightened, instantly alert. Governor—_Director_—Vilrein nodded at her respectfully as she passed, lips pressed tightly together, but she didn't stop until she was standing directly in front of Tarkin, Vader and Palpatine.

"Governor," she greeted first, with the barest dip of her head. Leia had to stifle a vindictive laugh at the offence in Tarkin's eyes.

Vilrein bowed deeply to Palpatine. "Your Majesty, Lord Vader." She straightened up again, though her gaze was still riveted to the floor. "I am here to answer any questions you may have on the production and capabilities of the SSD _Executor_. I am—"

"I know who you are, Director," Palpatine interrupted with a wave of his hand. Leia saw Vilrein's lips tighten further, unsure whether to take that as a compliment or an insult.

_Insult_, Leia thought, and felt hot and angry on the woman's behalf.

"And I have a _great many questions_," he continued, turning back to the viewport. His gaze rested hungrily on the warships beyond. "How soon will Lord Vader be able to transfer his operations to this ship?"

If Vilrein noticed the power play she'd just been dragged into, she didn't let on. She just said calmly, "As soon as Lord Vader wishes, Your Majesty. Production on the _Executor_ is almost entirely complete, despite the. . . hiccups. . . of a few months ago. The past weeks have only been touching up shield quality, performing surface measures and minor repairs—"

"Then I suppose your efforts should be congratulated, Governor Tarkin," Palpatine said. The smug smile both men were wearing made Leia's blood boil. "You've delivered my right hand man the greatest tool he could use in his efforts to keep my galaxy safe, and for that I commend you."

Tarkin, the piece of bantha dung, bowed his head and accepted the compliment like he deserved it. "I seek only to serve my Emperor."

The slight to Vilrein was not unnoticed by the woman herself. Injustice welled up inside her—Leia could sense it, and so could Palpatine—but she allowed none of it to show on her face. It was impressive.

Leia liked her all the more.

"Perhaps, Director"—was Leia imagining it, or did he place a touch of emphasis on her title?—"if the _Executor_ is as ready as you say, we could have a tour of the interior?"

She gave another short bow, clipping her heels together neatly. "Of course, Your Majesty. If you would come this way, and I can get some of the more specialised architects and engineers to explain the finer details of the construction."

"That would be wonderful. Lead the way."

They walked for a while just to get onboard the massive ship; Leia watched it loom closer and closer and thought she had never seen anything so large in her life.

It was another hour into the tour before the responsibility for asking questions fell more onto the engineers than Vilrein herself. The moment she deemed it timely, Leia gestured for Vilrein to drift to the back of the procession, which she did with little resistance.

"My lady," she greeted, softly enough that the words didn't carry. Leia could still pick from her mind a slight. . . not _resentment_, but confusion and uncertainty in reporting to someone as young as Leia was.

Leia didn't begrudge her it. It was understandable.

She just cut to the chase: "How have things been since Luke and I left?"

Vilrein heard the unspoken question. After all, she _had_ been sending detailed reports about it for months. Leia knew everything official; she wanted to hear the woman's own opinion.

". . .fraught," Vilrein said finally, glancing ahead to ensure no one heard—least of all the construction workers. "You read about the wage cuts—"

"I did."

"He wouldn't listen to my advice on what the reactions would be." She tactfully didn't name Tarkin aloud, but Leia knew what she meant. "When you left, we were back on schedule with a reasonable confidence. Now, we've risked overexerting ourselves in order to get this done, because his methods can be. . . different to what we're used to."

_This_ was why Leia hated the process of politicking between the governors and the moffs. The galaxy was so full of species, cultures, ways of life; having such a large sector of space be wrestled over by one or two politicians, with the victory going only to the one with the most power. . . The winner didn't _fit_. They would impose their word on the system, but if the system wasn't expecting something similar, there would be a long period of unrest.

Speaking of which. . . "And the perpetrators of the last incident?"

"They were dealt with. All investigations back up what your brother discovered from the Velts, and we haven't had a further hint of Gerrera's Partisans anywhere around here."

Leia nodded, glad but still wary. They hadn't had a hint _yet_.

But the winner didn't fit. So matter how much Tarkin tightened his grip, the more things would start to slip through his fingers. Such a large, diverse area as his territory could never be governed by one man. . .

. . .the way the entire galaxy was governed by the Empire?

One way of life. One idea. That was the point of the Empire—that was why that curator on Naboo had been murdered for going against it, why Leia sometimes forgot there were colours other than black, red and grey.

She shook her head, and conveyed to Vilrein that she was finished with a slight nod of her head, then turned her attention back to the massive ship they were walking through. She had a lot to think about.

The tour lasted another few hours, and by that point Leia—and Luke; she could feel it through their bond, which only made it worse—was exhausted. She really needed to go to sleep.

When she returned to their room on the _Devastator_, she crashed onto the bed without hesitation, not even bothering to contest the fact that Luke was _still_ in the top bunk. Her brother was off somewhere on the ship, probably gushing over the _Executor_ while their father looked on fondly, but she didn't care enough to check right now. She just lay in her bed, eyes drifting shut. . .

But she couldn't sleep.

Thoughts—_doubts_—were ringing in her mind. She didn't think they'd _stopped_ ringing since she'd first plugged Tsabin's datachip into her pad, and opened it.

_Sabé_. . .

Too tired to listen to common sense, she rolled over, pulled her comlink off the small table that jutted out from the wall, and commed her.

Why? She didn't know. Maybe she was just sick of all these doubts plaguing her day and night, and needed to talk to someone. She couldn't talk to her father, that was for sure, and the last time she'd voiced such an idea with Luke he'd fled halfway across the galaxy.

Sabé's voice was scrambled, as it always was, but she recognised the inflections in, _"Leia?"_

"Yes." A beat of awkward silence, then before Sabé could ask for a rational explanation when none were forthcoming— "You didn't answer my question last time."

_"About the governors?"_

"Yes."

Calm, measured quiet. _"Well, we didn't have governors in the Republic—"_

"Then who was in control? How did you get them to agree? What measures prevented them from gaining too much power?"

_". . .did something happen on Kuat?"_

Leia scowled. "Are you keeping tabs on me?"

_"I don't mean to insult you by saying no, but no. Not in a military sense." _Leia opened her mouth to ask what the _hell_ that meant— _"But we _are_ keeping tabs on your father. And everyone knows the major Empire Day celebrations are going to be on Kuat this year, for the unveiling of the _Executor_."_

_And Project Stardust_, Leia thought, but that would only be to the military. And it would be a _fundamentally_ bad idea to talk about that with a Rebel.

_"And we heard about your stint on Kuat a few months ago."_

Leia scowled fiercely, for all that the connection was voice only, and Sabé didn't have a clue what she looked like. "Are you gonna call me a monster for that?"

_"On the contrary. There was death, yes, but far more on Saw's part than your own. And the temporary changes instituted by yourselves and Governor Vilrein actually made Rebel recruitment more difficult in that sector for quite some time."_

Leia wondered whether Sabé should be telling her this.

"'Quite some time'," she drawled instead.

_"Indeed. I assume you heard about Tarkin."_

"Uh huh. So how _did_ you avoid one person accumulating too much power in the Republic?"

Sabé said dryly, _"Well, one could say we didn't, in the end." That's our entire problem. "But otherwise, there _were_ checks in place. Term limits. Other senators you had to convince." _There was something like a sigh, then she muttered, _"The were _always_ other senators to convince. . ."_

Leia laughed. "I suppose."

_"It meant there were always new people coming in," _Sabé added. _"New ideas, new perspectives—it's impossible to represent every interest of every species and every culture, but we did our best. Your Empire doesn't even try."_

_That_ took a turn. Leia's hand squeezed the comlink almost unconsciously; next to her, the table rattled where it stood. "Simply because we don't waste time indulging in idealism—"

_"So you don't think people deserve to forge their own fates."_

The reply was out before she could take it back. "If they could agree, there wouldn't be a problem."

_"People _don't_ agree. Even in the Empire, as I'm sure you've noticed."_

Leia couldn't argue with that. Especially with her family as. . . divided. . . as it was.

_"That doesn't mean they don't deserve basic liberties, or _rights_. They still deserve to be free of fear."_

"And I support that! But I am _not_ an idealist."

_"Leia," _Sabé's voice was oddly sombre, _"has anyone everyone told you that you're not responsible for solving every galactic crisis?"_

The words punched her in the gut.

They wounded and liberated her in equal measures.

She _didn't_ have to stick her neck out and fix every inconsistency. She didn't have to worry about everything like it was a personal attack. She didn't have to take everything onto her shoulders—even going so far as to not tell her brother about it, in recent times.

She was not that important. Not yet.

She couldn't decide whether that was good or bad.

"When I'm Empress," she said grimly, "I _will be_."

* * *

Leia probably thought he was badgering anyone and everyone for more information about the myriad of ships they'd seen today. She was wrong.

Luke didn't move to correct her assumption.

He _had_ thoroughly enjoyed looking at all the ships. The _Executor_ was a groundbreaking new ship, the largest yet, and was already giving rise to an entirely new class of Star Destroyers named for it. He was proud that that might soon be his father's flagship, that his father might officially teach him to command something like it one day—wasn't he?—but. . .

He'd been distracted all day.

He'd been distracted for days.

Tano's words still haunted him. They had been hard enough to dismiss on Coruscant, while they were living _in Padmé Amidala's apartment_; it was impossible to dismiss the spectre that, Luke was beginning to realise, had hung over his life for the last ten years—longer.

He had listened to his aunt and uncle's worried whispers in the dead of night, even before his father had come.

And now they'd come to Kuat, and Luke was thinking.

The last time they'd been here, they'd been sent to crush an uprising; they'd been sent looking for signs of Amidala, and found only Gerrera's work instead.

Now they'd come looking for nothing at all, and he saw too much.

How many of the people surrounding him today—officers, governors, _Imperials_—would fire on an unarmed transport?

It was against Imperial protocol, but. . . how many people actually followed that? How many people _wouldn't_ fire on an unarmed transport, if it was them giving the orders, them pulling the trigger?

Tarkin would.

Palpatine, without a doubt, would.

His father—

Luke swallowed harshly at the thought, _executioner_, but. . .

His father would.

Would _he_?

No. He'd proved that at Skystrike.

Would Leia?

No. He knew that.

So they could change it, he decided. They would continue with their coup, remove Palpatine, and once they were the most powerful people in the galaxy they would be in a position to change things.

_If they could. . ._

He crushed the doubts down. They _would_. As much as his father and sister were pragmatists through and through, Luke had to hold onto some modicum of positivity. Otherwise, what was the point?

But his decision and resolve didn't stop him from thinking about Amidala.

From thinking about his _mother_.

So even as he sensed his sister toss and turn, trying desperately to scrape some sleep into her poor mind, he slipped into a room down the corridor that he could sense wasn't being monitored. Well, it was a storage cupboard, so it made sense it wasn't being monitored, but Luke still swept through it with the Force to check for any bugs.

There were none.

He still couldn't relax the tension from his muscles as he settled cross-legged onto the floor, despite the reassurance. Perhaps because surveillance wasn't _actually_ what he was worried about.

Tano picked up her comlink fairly quickly, considering he had no idea where she was, what time it was, or whether or not she'd been busy. Perhaps she was just that dedicated to converting him. _"Hello?"_

"Tano," he greeted, a little stiffly, suddenly unsure what to say.

She laughed. _"Hey, Sky—"_ She cut herself off midway, like there was something else she wanted to say. _"—walker. Have you thought about what I said?"_

"Yes." _Non-stop._

_"Come to any decisions?"_

He gritted his teeth. "Yes." He didn't elaborate.

The only image on this call wasn't of Tano's face, but of a symbol: two lines with indents in the middle, and two corresponding diamonds. Luke assumed it was a Rebel code of some sort, but he had no idea what it could mean.

_"And what did you decide?"_ Even through the encryption on her voice, Luke could hear the hope.

Luke didn't answer her. Instead he asked, "Why did my mother dump me on Tatooine?"

Tano went quiet for a moment. _"I assume it was to protect you from your father and the Emperor."_

"From my _father_?" Luke scoffed. "He—"

_"Stole your memories, taught you to be subservient to Palpatine, stood by as the Emperor electrocuted you?"_

"—_loves me_."

An awkward pause, though Luke didn't miss the fact that Tano had known about the torture. Clearly they had spies in the Palace. He'd have to deal with that, he thought numbly.

_"And you think that your mother doesn't?"_

Luke let out a ragged laugh, and tilted his head back. The cupboard's shelves dug into his back uncomfortably. "I think that her Rebellion was more important to her than me and Leia, yes."

_"And your father cares more about you than the Empire?"_ There was scepticism in her voice, and it just annoyed Luke further.

"Yes," he snapped. That was one thing he was certain of, if nothing else. "He does."

_"Impossible," _she said confidently. He wasn't sure if she genuinely believed it, or if she was just trying to get a rise out of him. _"He's not Anakin. He _killed_ Anakin; he said it to my face. He wouldn't claim Anakin's children. Not out of love."_

"You're wrong. Clearly you don't know as much about him as you thought."

Tano hesitated, then backtracked. _"Even so, I know your mother lived with you for a year or so, when you were very young. But by then, B— her friend,"_ Luke considered telling her that they already suspected Bail Organa was a Rebel, _"had already started on trying to formulate at least small scale resistance—they'd already recruited me—and she couldn't stay out of it. She was Padmé Amidala, the staunchest defender of democracy that galaxy has ever seen. She couldn't sit in a desert and watch the galaxy burn."_

He didn't say anything. Tano reiterated, gently but forcefully, _"She always intended to come back—"_

"And then she did," he finished bitterly, "and we were gone."

_". . .yes."_

Luke's finger hovered over the button to disconnect the call, but he had to ask— "Do you think she regrets it?"

_"The Rebellion?"_ A pause, then, with all the finality of a death knell— _"No."_

"Alright."

_"But—"_

He hit the button, and the blue image vanished.

* * *

Thousands of parsecs away, Ahsoka grimaced—both at the abrupt cut off and the sheer _hurt_ that had been loaded into that last word.

"But," she finished quietly to herself, the warmth of Dantooine's sunrise starting to seep into the back of her head, "she regrets not taking you with her."


	19. Empire Day

With Leia's newfound memories, she knew that when she'd lived on Tatooine, there had been time where she'd woken up on her birthday and made it all the way into the kitchen before she saw the two small piles of presents on the table, and remembered.

She'd done that occasionally on Mustafar as well, she knew, but it had been rarer. Her father had trained them both so thoroughly with the Force that she never failed to wake up and notice his overwhelming presence wasn't there—gone as of a few days beforehand, ordered by an Emperor she'd never met to attend him and his _Empire Day_ instead of his children on their birthday.

But ever since she'd first arrived on Coruscant, it was _impossible_ to forget.

The alarm woke her up early, as it always did; she groaned, as she always did. The first thing she was aware of was Luke, shifting in the bed above her. Then she focused, and everything made sense.

Kuat. Empire Day. Eighteenth birthday.

She pulled a face that was half-grin, half-grimace. Well, at least she was legally an adult now.

And after they'd attended the obligatory speech Palpatine would make at the official unveiling of the _Executor_, and then sat through an hour or two of a banquet, they'd have the entire evening to themselves. Their father always gave them presents.

But, in truth, Leia disliked Empire Day.

She didn't hate it. It was, after all, her birthday, and the day the Empire she served had been founded. But she disliked it, if only because of the pain she knew it brought her father.

Her mother had died on this day—

Except no.

She _hadn't_.

And, reaching out to find her father, the indigo storm of grief and rage he always was today, she had the overwhelming urge to tell him.

She didn't.

Instead, she drew back into herself, and got dressed.

* * *

If there was one thing Luke hated about Empire Day the most, it was the speeches.

He was not a politician. He couldn't sit through hours and hours of one or two people talking and saying essentially the same thing—or nothing at all. He'd sat in enough lessons alongside Leia to know what they were talking about, and why, but he had never been taught to her level for a _reason_. He hated this.

Palpatine's speech was something about how the Empire was now an adult. He was discussing all the _great_ _beings_ who'd helped him to raise it to maturity—with an honorary jab at the _lovely Padmé Amidala, whose name is being vilified by terrorists_—but to be entirely honest, Luke had stopped listening in the seventeenth minute.

He amused himself instead by seeing how many politicians he could torment. Using the Force to give them slight headaches, or itches, or the urge to sneeze, then watching their faces contort as they tried not to interrupt the speech, was _vastly_ entertaining.

Leia gave him a look at one point, but when he grinned at her, she grinned back.

The unveiling of the _Executor_ caught his attention as well, but only because she was still a magnificent ship. Her _representation of a new direction and capability in their adult Empire_ didn't matter to him at all.

What seemed like an eternity later, they finally started the banquet. It was still awkward—Luke was wedged between his father and his sister, and _his father couldn't eat_—but at least he could talk to Leia. She always made wickedly accurate jibes about politicians.

Of course, Palpatine was on his father's left, and could probably hear every word, but he seemed more amused than anything.

So the banquet passed quickly enough as well. Luke had just excused himself to visit the refresher shortly before dessert, when he met someone in the corridor.

She was waiting for him, that much was clear. She was there when he exited the refresher, leaning against the wall in a position that would have looked casual, had she not been so stiff.

Her helmet hissed open when he stopped, surprised.

"J— Sixth Sister," he said.

She nodded. She didn't greet him back—calling him _Luke_ seemed too intimate, and there was no other name she knew of to call him—but she surprised him anyway. "I wanted to thank you."

The words were stiff as well. Luke wasn't surprised at that. It was the only thing he wasn't baffled at.

"Thank me?" he asked, confused.

Jade nodded. "Palpatine put Thrawn on Amidala's case instead Phoenix Squadron's," she said, "on your suggestion. He's started the hunt, and we've started to turn in results. We've hunted their base down, and we're confident that we'll find it within a few weeks, thanks to your information. So thank you."

Luke wondered when she had ever been taught to thank anyone. Perhaps, in his attempt to seem like someone she could trust somewhat, he'd overshot it a bit.

Maybe she thought they were allies. If not. . . friends.

Luke didn't find the idea all that appalling. Almost appealing, in fact. He was well aware that he knew no one his age except Leia, and perhaps it might be. . . beneficial.

His father would disagree, but he and his father disagreed on a lot of things, nowadays.

So Luke just smiled slightly, and started walking back to the banquet. "You're welcome."

* * *

The banquet went slowly for Leia, but eventually it was over with. For a moment, it looked like Palpatine was going to make them stay for the after-speech (and the speech after that, and the speech after that) but in the end, Luke and Leia were allowed to leave, and only their father had to stay.

After all, the after-speech was the one that would get broadcast to the entire galaxy. And while Vader was the Emperor's right hand, the symbol of security and strength for the Empire, his visage respected and feared in equal measures. . . Luke and Leia's faces were not supposed to be such public knowledge.

It was the reason there hadn't been a public announcement beyond a quiet introduction to court for them; no one outside of the Empire's elite—no one _unimportant_—could be expected to know that Leia was the heir, or that they were both already respected as Imperial agents. Their father said it was to avoid assassination attempts, _especially_ after the one when they were ten years old. The court gossip had been bad, and some trigger-happy Rebels had decided to take out any future Sith Lords before they did any damage.

They had failed, and their allies had suffered for it.

Logically, it made sense. But with everything she knew now, Leia couldn't help but theorise if there was another reason: if their father hadn't wanted anyone who had been implicit in their _kidnapping_ to have any sort of access to them.

Leia couldn't blame him for that. She just blamed him for not telling her the truth.

And she blamed him for nightmares of the cries of her aunt and uncle as he cut through them like crops.

So she felt no guilt whatsoever about linking arms with Luke and fleeing the _Executor_, leaving him to the mercy of the politicians.

* * *

He summoned them to his quarters on the _Devastator_ a few hours later, his begrudging amusement clear through the Force. And even _that_ was minimal: he was, above all else, excited. It was their birthday.

There was sadness—there was always sadness, on this day—but he was pushing it aside.

"How was the speech, Father?" Luke asked sweetly. His hyperbaric chamber was open; he ducked inside, and grinned at his unmasked face.

Vader rolled his eyes. Funny—now that Luke had seen the holos of Anakin Skywalker before the suit, he could genuinely see the resemblance, and not just because of the scar over his right eye.

"Insufferable, as always," Vader said as Leia entered, and the pod sealed behind her. "We should remove him just so I never have to sit through another speech like that again."

"I'll be sure to be more succinct about it, don't worry." Leia smiled, but it lacked that wicked edge she sported so often. She was, after all, seventeen—_eighteen_, now. She still had a certain childishness to her.

Vader grumbled, "See that you do," but moved on quickly. He didn't want to talk about Palpatine.

He handed them both a soft, flexible package. "Here."

Luke raised an eyebrow at his present. "Wow, I wonder what it is."

"I maintain the hope that you will _actually_ _wear_ _them_, someday."

"_Fine_, Father," Leia capitulated. She'd already ripped hers open, and swung the indigo cape round her shoulders. Luke had to admit, it looked nice. The silver embroidery was subtle, but stylish, and one could never tell just by looking at it that it _was_ armorweave, fireproof, and all the other things his father's capes were. "We'll wear them at this fancy unveiling of _Project Stardust_ tomorrow."

Luke nodded his agreement absently, taking more time to study his. The fabric was heavy, but it was a comfortable weight; he took a moment to study the embroidery.

Silver threads picked out against an indigo background. He frowned, studying the pattern of pinpricks carefully. It almost looked like. . .

"The Naboo and Tatooine systems," he said aloud.

His father nodded, almost sheepishly—_self-conscious_. His uncertainty was obvious on his face, without the mask. "Your mother's homeworld," he admitted, "and yours."

Well. At least he was being honest about it now.

Luke shook the thought away—it was uncharacteristically, not to mention _worryingly_, bitter—and shrugged the cape on himself, as Leia had. It took him a moment to fiddle with the silver chain at his neck, but once he'd done it the cape settled into place.

He really should wear his father's capes more often. They were, despite everything he'd ever said about them, very comfortable.

"You look dashing," Leia drawled.

He affected a small bow. "As do you, darling sister."

His father said smugly, "That is only the first part of your gift."

They turned to him in unison. "Oh?"

"You have both expressed interested in Grand Admiral Thrawn's TIE Defender program," he said, nodding at Luke, "and you gained yourself a respectful ally in Thrawn when you recommended him to Palpatine. His program is based on Lothal, but he has a few prototypes here for a demonstration to the Empire, and he has agreed that you may take them for a test run."

Luke was frozen. He exchanged a look with Leia, twin grins growing on their faces. "When?"

His father smiled softly, then summoned his mask to hand and put it on. "Now."

* * *

Grand Admiral Thrawn's TIE Defender program was unique in more ways than one. One only had to glance at the fighter to spot the first, and the others were obvious the moment one stepped inside the cockpit.

Mainly because it was as cramped as the inside of Palpatine's bank account.

Leia didn't care.

She knew that the general belief among the elite was that her brother and father were the military types; _she_ turned her formidable Sith magic, supposedly, to terrorising the court, Senate, and any unfortunate officers who had to deal with her.

As was so common when it came to the demon twins, the general belief was wrong.

She had a head for military matters the same way Luke had a head for politics: when it was necessary. The fact that their respective educations had diverged didn't mean they hadn't once run side-by-side—and it didn't mean that each one's knowledge of the other's area wasn't intense, detailed and, above all, _thorough_.

Leia loved ships. She was a fantastic pilot. Always had been.

She suspected what she remembered from Tatooine—particularly its inherently stifling nature—might have had something to do with it.

Leia loved ships. And she _especially_ loved Thrawn's TIE Defender.

It looked. . . not ungainly; unpleasant. But unpleasant in the way that a sando aqua monster looked unpleasant: its many limbs seemed inelegant until they killed, and then they became something like fascinating to watch.

The Defender's killer limbs were three: three jagged panels instead of the usual two, twisted and warped into vicious triangles. They were further away from the body of the fighter as well, the cockpit a single glaring eye amidst the. . . claws.

Leia decided to give it a rest with the monster imagery. It might give her nightmares.

But being inside it, feeling all of that monstrous power and speed at her fingertips and _using it_, shooting out of the hangar on her brother's tail, firing a salvo of shots into empty space and watching the lime starbursts briefly outshine the stars themselves. . .

_"You coming or what?"_

The comms crackled and she grinned to herself, watching Luke's Defender shoot forward on her left and set off his own celebratory fireworks.

"Happy Birthday, idiot," she said fondly. Though she couldn't see his face, she felt him smiling.

_"Happy Birthday to you too," _he drawled in reply, looping back round behind her. Her fighter rocked as something collided with her shields. _"Watch your back."_

"I thought that was your job, you traitor," she groused—then froze.

He'd been shocked to silence as well, a deep. . . _discomfort_ radiating across the comms—

_"Power has been bled from your lasers."_

Her father's amused bass tone interrupted the moment. He didn't seem to have picked up on the tension—or maybe he interpreted it as one of the many inside jokes he'd never understand. He just saw their antics.

_"So I can shoot at Leia without worrying about sororicide?" _ Her Defender rocked again; she seized the controls and rolled away from his fire, the Force blaring around her. A part of her—hell, all of her—delighted in the speed and smoothness of the movement. _"Great."_

"You'll have to catch me first."

_"I thought I just did."_

She gritted her teeth so hard her jaw ached, then bared them in a grin. "Not again you won't."

She shot forward, Luke hot on her heels.

She could sense her father following as well, but he wasn't participating in the play-dogfight just yet; they knew he'd wipe them both away within minutes.

Perhaps later they'd team up against him. Fly as wing mates, feel their minds merge together as one in a way they hadn't in far, far too long. But not now.

Now, keeping her mind connected to the Force but separate from her brother's was the only way she was going to _win _this.

* * *

They shot right the way around the dozens of construction sites on and near the planet. _This_ was the way to view the wonders the Empire's greatest supplier held: firsthand, passing by, under and through the massive skeletons being constructed, inside one of the wonders themselves.

Though, Luke supposed, the Defender wasn't Kuat's achievement. It was Lothal's; he knew Pryce and Thrawn had worked _very_ hard to keep Phoenix Squadron and the Spectres from learning of and ending such a lucrative, successful project.

Despite himself, he started thinking of Jade, of her forays into hunting them. Of his father, who'd failed—_failed_—so utterly on Malachor, and the showdown there.

Of Sabine Wren. Of Biggs, Wedge and Hobbie, who'd undoubtedly found their place in Phoenix Squadron itself.

Leia's shots splashed against his shields. He banked hard to the left, and dispelled his thoughts.

"We're coming up on the _Chimaera_," he said aloud. Thrawn's flagship was just visible beyond the skeletal Star Destroyer they were passing in construction.

Leia's voice had a grin in it—they could both sense that alien mind, intense with clarity, observing them from the _Chimaera_'s bridge.

_"Well then," _she said. _"We'd better show him just how good his prototype starfighters are, hadn't we?"_

Luke made to corkscrew and fire on her in response, but a nudge from the Force had him keep rolling. Bright bolts sailed just past him, sizzling his shields. In his peripheral vision, he saw Leia dive as well.

His father swooped in, his Defender's three wings like the clawed hand-shape he made when choking someone. Luke and Leia scattered.

He instinctively reached for his sister, their minds entwining. Plans, manoeuvres, back up plans flashed up and were instantly dismissed or ratified; their flight patterns switched from combatant to wingmen in an instant; they turned to face their father, grins tugging at their lips and exhilaration coursing through their veins.

Thrawn's satisfaction in the performance of the fighters couldn't hope to outstrip their own.


	20. Shatterpoint Four

**WE'RE HERE.**

* * *

The official unveiling for Project Stardust struck Luke as odd in multiple ways.

Firstly, it was scheduled for the day after Empire Day, yet it was subject to all sorts of secrecy. Only moffs, governors, trusted senators, the most respected admirals and other such favoured beings were allowed to attend. Luke and Leia, though still elated from their flight the previous night, shared a grimace when Vader mentioned they'd have to be on their best behaviour.

There was nothing Luke hated more than stuffy dignitaries. Even Rebels.

Especially not now, but he didn't want to think about that. _Especially_ if he was in the same room as the Emperor.

The other reasons everything seemed off were extrapolated from the first. It was only the day after Empire Day; the festivities should barely be dying down. On Coruscant they were no doubt just as vehement. Why, therefore, would any demonstrations _not _be made to the masses?

Luke knew why.

Because the demonstration was military, something the censorship departments would never let the common citizens know about. And if it was important enough to occupy a space in the Empire Day presentations, then that meant it was something Palpatine had a _personal_ interest in.

He'd tried to ask his father what Project Stardust was, before the event. Vader's mood had soured, he'd muttered, "An abomination," and that was all he would say on the matter.

So Luke knew nothing about what he was getting into when Mas Amedda ushered him and Leia onto the bridge of the _Devastator_. All the blast shields were down in this part of the ship, the viewports blocked; it made Luke oddly relieved to be able to see the stars again. They'd gone to unbelievable lengths to keep whatever this was a secret—the _Devastator_ had even completed a short hyperspace jump to a nearby system to stay away from all the eyes watching Kuat—and none of it was helping Luke's nerves.

He felt _cold_.

He milled about the bridge like everyone else, waiting for Palpatine to arrive.

It wasn't long before he spotted a middle-aged man in a dark suit standing near the viewport, staring out at the stars with an unusual amount of wistfulness. Luke wasn't the only one watching him: a vaguely familiar man of the same age, wearing a white suit and cape, had his eyes fixed on him as well. Luke surveyed the man in white, trying to remember his name.

He had to admire his cape, if nothing else. It was wide and flared out in the same way all of Luke's did—he and Luke's father clearly had similar taste.

Luke rubbed the fabric of his own cape mournfully. He'd never admit it to his father, but he _did_ genuinely like this new one he'd received for his birthday.

Krennic! That was the man's name.

Luke turned his gaze back to the first man.

He was standing by the viewport still, not quite in his father's favoured spot, but fairly close. The stars were bright beyond it in their dust clouds of blue and violet, but Luke got the feeling they weren't what the man was seeing.

He probed him gently with the Force. The only emotion he could feel was _dread_.

Interesting.

He stepped forward, making sure his approach was silent. The man jumped when he finally noticed Luke beside him.

"What a beautiful view," Luke said amiably, still paying close attention to the man's emotions. Though there was confusion there—many people got confused when they saw such a young Imperial—he was tense. And Luke's presence was only making him tenser.

Good. Maybe then he'd actually get some answers.

"I can't stop looking at it," came the reply. It wasn't a lie, but it _was_ an evasion. Luke got the sense that this was a man who wasn't very good at outright lying.

Well. If he didn't want to lie, there was no harm in asking him directly.

"I don't suppose you know what this demonstration is of?" Luke didn't want to just rip it from his mind—that could get messy, especially if he turned out not to know anything.

"I— I have an idea," his eyes darted across Luke's stiff, black, military-cut clothing, and when he found no rank plate he settled for, "sir. But I wouldn't want to share it, for fear of being wrong."

Luke had been right. He was a terrible liar.

Luke, on the other hand, was not. "No harm in sharing it. There's no judgement here."

The man's gaze snapped to his, to the cape around his shoulders, and he heard one thought zip through his mind.

Luke's smile sharpened into something a little too eager, a little too forward. Well. If the man thought he was just the son of one of the dignitaries, here to try to establish a niche at court, that _that_ was the only reason someone so young would be serving the Empire, then it would just be remiss of Luke not to take advantage of that, wouldn't it?

Accusations of nepotism had stalked Luke since he'd first picked up a lightsaber in the Empire's name. The accusers had generally shut up after the first death threat, but there had always been more and he expected there always would be. It didn't matter. He'd rise above them every time.

He held out his hand, that too-sharp smile still on his face, and said, "I'm Luke Skywalker."

He hadn't talked to his father about officially taking on that name again; frankly, his father had no say in the matter. He'd eschewed any say, first when he'd renounced the name, and second when he'd forced Luke and Leia to do so as well.

But they hadn't even told Palpatine that they knew, yet, and perhaps through the grapevine wasn't the wisest way for him to find out. Whether or not he already suspected, as Leia had said.

Luke toyed with the idea of taking it back, erasing it from the man's mind. Then he decided he didn't care. Leia would understand, and she was the only one whose opinion he cared about, anymore.

This was his name. His father, Palpatine, _the whole kriffing galaxy_ could deal with it.

The man took his hand warily, but he clearly didn't recognise the name as someone important—which was half the reason Luke had given it. "Galen Erso."

The name triangulated with "Orson Krennic" and "Project Stardust" to spit out: scientist. He remembered now. Krennic had been elevated to his current position on the project years and years ago, after managing to secure the genius scientist considered perhaps the only person who could pull of such a marvellous feat of engineering. What that marvellous feat of engineering was, Luke had no idea, but that was what he was here to find out.

One thing was clear, though: Galen Erso knew _exactly_ what they were about to see.

Luke took a breath and pulled the Force close, ready to probe again both verbally and metaphysically—

He sensed that oily presence approach just before the doors to the bridge hissed open.

He immediately threw himself to one knee, everyone else on the bridge following suit.

He fixed his father's and sister's positions in his mind. They were kneeling as well; Leia gave him a terse nod before they all bowed their heads, and the Emperor entered.

The _tap_ of his cane against the floor, the rasp of Vader's respirator, filled the silence.

* * *

Leia nodded at Luke, trying to reassure him despite her own misgivings about the situation. It was clear something big was going on, something _important_, and she couldn't even begin to unpick the knot of anticipation, nervousness and _dread_ in her stomach. But she wanted to comfort her brother, so she held his gaze until she felt his probe retract, his spirit settle. Only then did she bow her head.

She was one of the last people to do so, but who was going to punish her for it?

Palpatine limped into the room, the cane Leia knew full well he did not need clacking against the floor. She resisted the urge to roll her eyes. She was aware her impatience was showing, but she wanted to know what was going on _now_; she couldn't be expected to sit through all this ceremony.

Palpatine _must _be expecting her reaction. He'd all but dangled the fact that there was something important going on she didn't know about in front of her, and he thought she wouldn't swipe at it? This was _her_ future court. She should be aware of all the major ins and outs of it.

Finally, after an agonisingly long time, he stopped at the front of the bridge, close enough to where Luke and the man he'd been terrorising that his dark cloak swept over her brother's toe. Luke discreetly shuffled back.

Leia couldn't help but take slight offence that the Emperor was standing in her father's favourite spot.

The cane rapped once on the floor. The sound was stark against the silence; it took everything in Leia not to flinch back on sheer instinct.

"Stand, favoured citizens of the Empire," Palpatine began. His voice was quiet, but it carried, and Leia didn't miss how he managed to make _citizens_ sound like _servants_. "You are here today because you have been deemed some of the finest minds in the galaxy. Your efforts have maintained security the likes of which was never seen in the Old Republic, whether they serve in the Senate"—only someone who knew him could hear the disgust in his voice as he said the word—"in the military, or anywhere else. And because of your service, you have been chosen to be the first to witness the power that will help shape the galaxy for generations, and will form the basis of the Empire in the years to come.

"This project is extremely dear to my heart," he continued, "and I have invested much of my time and attention into it for the last twenty years, and will continue to for the year it has left until completion. If that means other areas of my Empire have suffered, then that is my greatest regret, but in a moment you will understand as clearly as I do that it has been a necessary evil. All these years, all this work, it has been worth it, for the peace this _Project Stardust_ will bring."

Leia still hated his guts, but she was hooked on what he was saying, now. What was he even suggesting. . .?

"I give you an end to this war that dogs us so persistently." His voice rose will every word. "I give you an end to petty rebellions by weak-minded fools who draw our attention away from the real problems in the galaxy. I give you the means by which the Empire, and all of us, shall reign supreme, as it was meant to be."

Leia shifted where she stood, something cold clawing up her spine. Such arguments sounded megalomaniacal, coming from Palpatine's mouth, but that wasn't what made her uncomfortable: what made her uncomfortable was that _she'd believed it_.

For so long, she'd believed it.

She was Leia, and that was all she'd ever needed to be. She was the daughter of Darth Vader, sister to Luke, and heir to the galaxy. She _was_ the heir to the galaxy; that was everything she knew. It was where she was meant to be.

Except it wasn't.

She was Leia Skywalker, a farm girl from a backwater planet. The daughter of a senator and a Sith Lord, true, but what had she ever done to deserve the galaxy? What made her so much better than anyone else, when she was only now starting to understand how fundamentally flawed her perception of her reality had been?

She'd told Luke that they were better than the Inquisitors. He'd replied that he wasn't so sure.

She understood what he meant, now.

"I give you," Palpatine finished, gesturing to the space beyond the viewport with one, black-robed hand, "the Death Star."

Leia sensed it before she saw it: a massive, _massive_ object emerging from hyperspace directly before them, the hundreds of thousands of workers aboard it each bright spots in the Force. She took a half-step forward, _staring_; a distant part of her registered that her brother had taken a step forward at the same time.

It was the size of a small moon.

That was the first thing Leia's shocked mind processed: it was a space station, a _battle station_, the size of a small moon. It was spherical, with a ridge running around it more or less at the equator. Kuat's sun caressed its surface: a hard, bright corona of light engulfed it as it turned, then a focusing dish revealed itself amidst that light, gleaming just as brightly.

A _focusing dish_?

What—

Palpatine answered her question before she even knew what she was going to ask. "This battle station has the greatest amount of firepower of anything we have ever produced. More than the entire star fleet combined. No system will dare support these terrorists now. . ."

Leia held her breath, sure the other shoe was going to drop—

". . .for fear of their planet's total annihilation."

—and it did.

Palpatine half-turned back to face his monstrosity, his arms cast out before him like he was praying to some destructive deity. "_This_ is the power our Empire wields, my friends," he intoned. "_We _reign supreme in this galaxy. Each planet must accept that, and bow in their rightful place."

_Or they will be destroyed._

_Total annihilation._

The words, unspoken and spoken alike, mixed and muddled in Leia's shocked mind. She heard nothing but silence for long, long moments save for the hammering of her own heart, the rasp of her own breathing.

Then the applause came.

It sickened her to her core, even as she participated on instinct. Instinct: that was the only thing that kept her from betraying her sheer _disgust_ at all this Empire was; that, and years of practise. Her horror remained locked behind shields, even from Luke, though it was no less potent for it.

Palpatine had built a machine to destroy life.

It was a blight upon the Force. It was. . . well, _disgusting_. It was. . .

. . .exactly the sort of thing he would do.

The bridge was a cacophony of noise. She stood there among dozens of the highest-ranking, most trusted Imperials in the Empire she served, and she'd never felt so out of place. Because—social expectations upon them or not—they _supported_ this. She could sense it through the Force.

A project like this had to have been funded by rich people, the wealthiest in the galaxy; it had to have been worked on by the brightest minds there were; it had to have been helmed by the greatest organisers, the most effective planners, in order to get to completion. It had to have been a mammoth undertaking. . .

. . .and enough people were so _ambitious_, so _arrogant_, so _avaricious_ that _it had worked._

Leia had thought she could root out the corruption in the Empire. After the coup, once she was Empress. But who could root out all of _this_?

Every person who'd funded this?

Every person who'd supported it?

And what about every person who'd ever suspected its existence, or seen something suspicious, and just. . . turned away, let themselves wallow in their own self-righteous ignorance? What about the people who had turned and would turn a blind eye to such unquestionable evil, again and again and again, all for the sake of. . . what? Money? Ambition?

With the way this empire ran: their own lives, even?

And what about her father?

The knowledge stopped Leia cold.

Her father had known about this.

An _abomination_, he'd called it; Leia did not disagree. But even thinking that, he'd let it happen anyway, _allowed_ Palpatine to get away with it. How many times had one of his _classified missions_ been to the building site of this _Death Star_? How many times had he willing gone off to aid the production of such a repulsive item, lying to them about what he was doing with the usual pretty words? _Peace. Justice. Security._

_This is not justice._

How many times had Leia _let him_?

How many times had she turned a blind eye herself?

She turned her head. Luke tried to catch her gaze, but she couldn't look at him. Not right now, not with these thoughts; not with how he'd reacted the last time she'd confided in him about such a thing. Her eyes sought out her father, but the moment Vader turned to meet her gaze as well, she looked away.

She swallowed.

Her father had been wrong.

He had been wrong when he killed their aunt and uncle and stolen their memories of it, withheld their identities. And he had been wrong now, in supporting this monstrosity, and deceiving them about it.

So what if. . .

What if. . .

It was a quiet, treasonous voice in her head that spoke, but Leia couldn't bring herself to silence it.

Not now.

_So what if he's wrong about the Empire and the coup, as well?_

* * *

Luke barely heard what Palpatine said after that, desperately trying to catch his sister's eye. She was as pale as bone, still in a way she never was, and she was _definitely_ avoiding his gaze.

After what seemed like an age, Palpatine dismissed the gathering, and he shot straight for her. He snagged her wrist before she could flee the bridge.

"Are you alright?" he asked softly, falling into step with her through the halls of the _Devastator_. He nudged open their twin bond to let some of his concern—and disgust at what they'd just witnessed—seep through.

She relaxed marginally, but she remained tightly closed off in the Force.

"I'm fine," she said aloud. Then—mentally, because there were security holos on the _Devastator_—_I can see why Father called it an abomination._

_It's horrific,_ he agreed. He cast his senses out to pick through the Force for surveillance cameras; a small, empty board room nearby only had one. _And_ it was faulty.

He touched Leia's wrist lightly, tilting his head towards the door. After a moment, she shook her head.

"No," she murmured. "I— I want to think about it myself, first."

He nodded. He could understand that. He still hadn't fully opened up to her about Skystrike. He hadn't yet decided what it meant to him, but. . . he thought he might have now.

Watching her go, he had to admit: That was the part that scared him the most.

* * *

Leia would never admit it, but she knew the frequency to Sabé's comm off by heart by now. She keyed it in on reflex, desperately trying to stop her hands from shaking.

As always, the woman picked up within moments. Leia wondered if she considered her a priority, or something. _"Leia?"_

"They've made a Death Star," she blurted out, just self-conscious enough to keep her voice down. Otherwise, she had no control of what her body was doing; she bowed her head, pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. They were wet.

Sabé didn't push for answers; maybe she thought Leia would clam up if she did.

She wouldn't have, but she was grateful for the silence anyway: it meant nothing interrupted the _cascade_ that was already unintelligible enough as it was.

"I— we had a _plan_, me and Luke and Father: we were going to kill Palpatine, because he's a _blight on the galaxy_, and then I was going to be Empress and I could _change things_, all the _shit_ that that's so _kriffed up_ in this Empire, but— Then there's a _Death Star_, and everyone was _applauding it_, and they _supported it_, and that was _everyone in the upper echelons of the Empire. Everyone_ supported it. _My own kriffing father_ never did anything to stop it, for all that he preaches about it being _an_ _abomination_ or _disgusting_, and—" She took a deep breath for the first time since she started. A massive tear spilled down her cheek, hot and _flooding_. "There is nothing worth saving here."

It felt like tying a noose. The sheer act of saying those words— And she could _see_ the finality they brought about, the death knell. The snap of boots against permacrete as the firing squad lifted their blasters, the _snap-hiss_ of the lightsaber shooting through flesh only—

Whose death did it herald?

Palpatine's? Her own? Luke's?

Her father's?

_I've been having visions of your father's death. . ._

No.

No—she didn't know what the future would hold, but she _would not_ lose any more family.

"There is nothing worth saving in this Empire," she said again, stronger now, "and I want to help you tear it down."

* * *

Just because Leia had decided not to use that small board room, didn't mean Luke couldn't. And he did.

There was someone he needed to talk to.

He'd wondered, he remembered, how many people in the upper echelons of the Empire would object to firing on an unarmed transport.

After the applause at the Death Star, he had his answer:

Not enough.

Not enough for it to be worth it.

If they had no objections to firing on an unarmed _planet_, that just went without saying.

So Luke had a decision to make.

He was always chided for being reckless, for not _thinking_ before he _leapt_, so he took a moment to consider his options.

Stay with the Empire. Keep doing what he was doing. Stay with his father, his sister; participate in the coup, and hope he could. . . disassemble. . . this sadistic, selfish trend in the Imperial elite.

But the Empire wasn't a machine he could take apart and put back together. He knew that. Whatever he did, no matter how he tried to change it. . . this trend would continue.

His other option. . .

He tapped Ahsoka's frequency into his comlink and waited for a response.

This was a false dilemma. He knew that. There were _other options_, ones that weren't quite so _drastic_, which didn't have _the end of the galaxy as he knew it_ as the only thing to measure against.

But the thing was: it wasn't the defection that made his soul riot just thinking about it.

It was the thought of standing by and deciding to stay.

Because, as much as he wanted to pin everything on Palpatine, this was not the work of one man. The problems ran deeper than that.

The Empire he served had built something to destroy entire planets. Hardworking sentient beings had put their lives' work into something that was nothing more than a machine for destruction. Hundreds, if not _thousands_, of people had used Palpatine's work and embraced it, made it their own; they had turned militant totalitarianism into a chance to advance and _succeeded_, building a death machine to maintain that stranglehold on everyone else. Every person that had been in that room as it was revealed was guilty of it.

Tarkin, muscling in to drag more systems under his control.

His father, _executing_ anyone the tyrant thought stood in his way.

And Luke and Leia, who'd stood by, who'd done whatever was asked of them without question, without considering the long term effects. . .who'd enabled this.

The Empire was not as the Emperor made it. One person could have all the power in the galaxy, but they could never change every heart and mind. Palpatine had set the ball rolling, but it was the people. . .

. . ._and the system that put them in power_. . .

. . .which made it so toxic.

Nothing in politics was simple. That was why he had stuck to the military.

But one thing _was_:

Luke could not stand by any longer.

* * *

Sabé's silence betrayed just how _shocked_ she was, but there was a joy behind it as well. Leia tried not to think about that.

"I'll do what I can—I know you might not want a literal Sith rubbing shoulders with your soldiers, but I can fight, I'm highly placed, I— I can spy." She swallowed, throat drier than the breeze through Mos Eisley. "There. I can spy, pass on important information."

Sabé was clearly trying very hard to keep her calm, but her shock was still evident in her voice—the Amidala-like monotone she was forced to revert to—as she said, _"That's. . . very useful."_

"Here's my first piece of information: Palpatine went and built a _kriffing_ Death Star." Leia was well-aware she was babbling. She hoped Sabé could keep up. "It's a massive space station the size of a small moon, it has enough firepower to destroy an entire _planet_ at full potential. It was in the Kuat system until minutes ago, then it jumped to hyperspace back to wherever it's being constructed—I don't know where that is, but I can try and find out—"

_"Okay,"_ Sabé said. Her voice was still too calm, like the surface of a riptide. _"Okay, that's— This is brilliant, that you've told us. But," _she lowered her voice, _"the power to destroy _entire planets_?"_

The same horror that Leia had felt—that Leia had felt _Luke_ feel—was reflected in her voice.

* * *

_"Luke?" _Ahsoka said, sounding like it wasn't the first time she'd said it. He wondered how long he'd been lost in his own thoughts.

He took a deep breath, skipped any pleasantries, and said it. "I'd like to defect to the Rebellion."

The words were out before he could think on them in any more detail, because the more they thought about them, the more they were _true_.

His father might be willing to support this, but Luke was not his father.

And, for the first time in years, _he did not want to be_.

He might kill him. No, he wouldn't—what had Luke told Ahsoka before? He was more important to his father than the Empire.

At least, he thought, a thoroughly _insane_ plan starting to form in his mind, he hoped so.

Because this _was_ insane. Complete and utter madness, bantha poodoo. This naive idealism wasn't what his father had taught him—it wasn't what his _uncle_, long forgotten and missed, had taught him. It was the sort of idealism. . .

He suppressed a laugh.

It was the sort of idealism a Rebel would have.

* * *

"Yes," Leia confirmed grimly. "It— it's an abomination. _Entire planets_."

Sabé breathed out slowly. There was a tapping sound in the background—Leia realised suddenly that she was writing this all down. Everything Leia had told her.

_Everything Leia had told her._

Cold drenched her. What was she doing? She'd just betrayed her father, her brother. . .

. . .and all she felt was _relief_.

Luke would understand. It had been ages ago, but he'd _promised_ her that he would understand.

_I'd do my utmost best to understand _why_. Because I know you, I love you, and I trust that if you believe something's the right thing to do, then there's a good chance it is_

_I'm on _your_ side. I don't care which side that is._

He would understand, she resolved fiercely. . . but unable to still the wobble in her bottom lip at the thought of what might happen if he didn't.

* * *

_". . .you're serious." _Ahsoka's voice was flat.

"Absolutely. I'm highly placed; I'll be a good spy." Then, fiddling with his hands, he joked, "And my eighteenth birthday was yesterday, in case you object to minors signing up." Though if so, the Spectres were _very_ hypocritical—

It did as it intended: Ahsoka laughed. She sobered up again a moment later, but she _had_ laughed.

_"What brought this on?"_

Luke chewed at his bottom lip. "Palpatine's latest project. It's called the Death Star, and. . . you're not going to like it. It's an abomination."

_"What is it?" _She sounded wary.

"It's a battle station with the power to blow up planets."

She was quiet for a moment, processing that. _"And you have a problem with it?"_

"Of course I have a problem with it!" He struggled to keep the offence out of his tone. "I'm not a monster."

Silence.

Something cold wrapped itself around Luke's heart.

_". . .and your father? Is he opposed to it?"_

_Yes_, he made to say—but _no_ was just as true. His father, for all his bluster, had never made any move against it.

So either he approved of it, or he was a coward.

Luke didn't know which he'd prefer, but he _did_ know which was more likely.

"Don't," he said at last. "I— I don't—"

_"I understand. Your father and sister—"_

"I said _don't_." He didn't want to think about Leia.

She was the one who'd been starting to have Rebel sympathies, he knew. They'd started discussing it. . . and then he'd fled to Skystrike and committed treason, and suddenly it was too difficult to talk about. But theoretically, she should approve.

_Theoretically_.

But. . . she'd lit a match. He'd burnt the house down. There was a difference.

What had he said, when she first voiced her doubts? _I'm on _your_ side. I don't care which side that is._

What had she said? _Likewise_.

She. . . she would understand. She _had_ to. He'd explain it to her, later. Just. . . not now.

Not now, when his resolve was already fragile enough as it was.

_"Alright,"_ Ahsoka said. _"I have to go now, but I'll be in contact as soon as possible, if you can get more details for then. . ." _A pause. _". . .Fulcrum."_

He wanted sure whether to laugh or cry at the codename. He was doing this. He was _doing this_.

_"And. . ." _He could hear the smile in her voice.

* * *

The tapping had stopped.

Sabé said, _"Is there anything else you can tell us about this 'Death Star'?"_

Leia took a deep breath. "Yes," she said. "Much more. It's codenamed _Project Stardust_, it's been in construction for as long as the Empire's existed, it'll be completed in a year. . ."

She rattled off everything she could remember, listening only to Sabé's hums of acknowledgement every time she wrote down a new piece of information. After a while, she was done.

"That's everything."

_"Alright," _Sabé said. _"I'll get back to Padmé with this. And, in this meantime. . ."_

She paused, but Leia could hear the smile in her voice.

* * *

_"Welcome to the Rebellion."_

* * *

The human woman sitting in a small office on Dantooine reread the files again. Two reports: submitted by two completely different women, whom she knew for completely different reasons, both dear to her heart in many ways. The reports had been unconnected. . . but their contents were identical.

Sabé's excitement was palpable. So was Ahsoka's.

Padmé's was too.

She reread them. Again. She'd received them hours ago, and despite the nightmarish things they promised to reveal, this _planet killer_. . . she could not stop smiling.

Luke and Leia, entirely of their own accord, had decided to come home.


	21. Aftermath

It had always been a part of the itinerary to jump back to Coruscant at 0200 the morning after the reveal of the Death Star, so that Palpatine could _just_ make the end of the celebrations and give the speech that formally closed the Empire Day festival for another year. Leia just happened to have forgotten that fact, what with everything else that had gone on.

She woke up the next morning to the familiar hum of hyperspace engines underneath her. It was the first thing she noticed, which was unusual in itself. Usually when she woke up in hyperspace, what stood out to her was the glaring _emptiness_ all around her, in the Force. She welcomed it, usually: it reminded her of living on Mustafar and—she now knew—Tatooine, where her family were the only beings for miles.

It was peculiar, waking up to those familiar vibrations without the emptiness.

She cast her mind out, and felt for the minds of all the thousands of workers on the ship. They dotted the Force like sand grains in the Jundland Wastes. She frowned, pushed a little further, then a lot further. Her father sensed her probe from the general vicinity of the bridge, and sent one back, but she pushed further—

_There_. There was the edge of the ship, and hyperspace beyond it.

She frowned. It was an embarrassingly long time before it hit her.

She was on the _Executor_. They'd switched to her father's new flagship for the jump back because it was faster. She should have noticed: she and Luke had moved to completely different quarters on the _Executor_, with two fairly large bedrooms attaching to her father's main living area. They looked _nothing _like their quarters on the _Devastator_. But. . .

She was distracted.

And she knew exactly why.

Her conversation with Sabé was weighing on her mind.

She could barely remember what she'd said. She wasn't convinced it hadn't all been a dream—the Death Star, too. One horrible, horrible nightmare, where the galaxy as she knew it fractured before her eyes and she was left scrambling in the wake of it—

A knock at the door.

It was Luke, she confirmed after a moment. She didn't know how she hadn't sensed his approach, but it was Luke.

She gave him a mental nudge. He felt like a ball of nerves. _Come in._

The door hissed open, and he stepped in, pausing to take a look around her new bedroom. It was the same standard Imperial grey, black and white, a wardrobe in the corner, a large but comfortable bed she was still sitting cross-legged on.

"Huh," he said aloud. "Looks identical to mine."

"Almost as if it was built for twins," she quipped.

The corner of his mouth twisted, like he was trying not to smile. Despite all her worrying and preoccupation, his genuine amusement warmed her heart.

"So this is the _Executor_," she commented.

"Yup." He kicked his black boots off at the door and crawled onto her bed, settling into a seat behind her. Knowing what he was about to do, it wasn't a surprise when she felt him gently start to take apart the plaits she'd slept in overnight, and summoned her hairbrush to hand from the dresser.

He continued, "I've been awake for a few hours now—"

"Couldn't sleep?" she teased. It was soothing, the rhythmic strokes of the brush through her hair; she found herself relaxing from a tension she hadn't even realised she was carrying.

The brush stilled.

"No," he said quietly.

She grimaced, but knew better than to say anything else. Everything had been so. . . sensitive. . . lately—the Death Star, their conversation about Amidala, _her defection_—that while before she'd always known exactly what to say, now. . .

She couldn't say anything at all.

Fortunately, Luke recovered quickly. "You've slept in all the way to noon, lucky you," he commented jovially. "Father told me not to wake you because we technically don't have anything to do until we get back and he didn't want you mortally offending some important governor because you got bored."

"I would not have done that."

"I don't know, you can be pretty—"

"Finish that sentence and I will ram that hairbrush into you so hard you get imprints on your colon."

He laughed. "Alright, alright, I get it. But still, you got to sleep in. Cause for celebration."

"And what have _you_ been doing all this time?" She had her suspicions. "Wandering around getting under everyone's feet?"

"I," he informed her, putting the brush down and taking the hair in hand to start plaiting, "have been on the bridge—"

"Getting under everyone's feet?"

"_Watching how a Star Destroyer is run_."

Well, she knew what joke she would have made to that a few months ago. As distasteful as she found it now, she made it. She wanted to make him laugh again.

She nudged him with her elbow, glancing over her shoulder. "That'll be you in a few years."

Strangely enough, it just ruined the mood. Luke's hands froze for a moment, before they resumed plaiting. His cheerful tone was forced as he said, "Yeah."

Through the Force, it tasted like a lie. A lie tinged with _guilt_.

She frowned, almost—_almost_—turning right round there and then to ask him what was wrong. He was her brother; she wanted to help him. She wanted to _end_ this horrible, horrible awkwardness between them.

But at the same time, she knew she wouldn't be able to keep any of it a secret if she did. It was all come tumbling out, and Luke. . .

_I'm on your side._

She did not know how Luke would react.

Logically, she knew that with a little bit of talking round, a little bit of explanation, he'd _understand_—he'd _promised_ to understand. But. . . she had spent ten years surrounded by the dark side. Fear was something she knew well.

She was afraid of her brother looking at her like a monster.

Like he hated her.

Like a _traitor_.

And if there was the slightest, _tiniest_ chance that he would. . . she did not want to risk it.

It would break her.

So she kept quiet.

She didn't ask.

"The Death Star. . ." she said instead, because _that_ was clearly still weighing on everyone's minds. She felt Luke flinch. "That was real, then?"

"Unfortunately. It wasn't a dream." She didn't need to look at him to see the smile tugging at his lips. "I'd be concerned about you if you _had_ come up with it in a dream, though."

She laughed at that. There was nothing else to laugh at. "So would I, to be honest. But. . ." She chewed on her bottom lip. "It was real."

Luke's hands tightened on her hair.

"He actually built that."

"I know."

"It's—"

"Horrendous."

"Disgusting."

"Abominable."

"An affront to life itself."

A moment of surprise, then they laughed—_genuinely_ this time, in unison. It warmed her heart a little.

"I can get the thesaurus if you want," Luke quipped.

"Oh, shut up."

Another silence. So much said, so much left to say—the silence was a tangle of thorns and flowers in the woods, and Leia was unnerved and reassured by it in equal measure.

Her brother hated the Rebellion. . . but did he hate the Death Star—and Palpatine—more?

He had hero worshipped their father. In the wake of having that, that which was such a major part of his character, ripped away. . . who had he become?

She realised, with a pang of regret, that she'd never thought to find out.

But his next words—quiet, measured, and comfortably ambiguous—gave her a clue: "What is this Empire coming to?"

A sad smile curled her lips. He finished tying off the braid and let it thump softly against her back, his hands dropping into his lap. She twisted around to face him.

Automatically, she reached to entwine her fingers with his. His hand squeezed hers gently.

"I don't know," she admitted in a murmur. "But. . ."

He picked up on her thoughts. "It's up to us to change things."

_Change things_—that was it. That was the perfect phrase, as comfortably ambiguous as his question had been. It meant her nod wasn't a lie, and that the fierce resolve that flooded through her could, for a moment, be interpreted as equal to his.

It meant that, just for a moment, she could believe that they were actually in this together.

* * *

Despite how gentle and tender as it had been—or perhaps _because of_ how gentle and tender it had been—his conversation with Leia had shaken him.

He wanted to tell her the truth. He wanted to confide in her. When he was braiding her hair the way he had for as long as he could remember—come to think of it, even when they didn't have their memories, Leia had always worn her hair in styles Aunt Beru had taught her to do—he'd wanted it more than anything. It was such an intimate, comfortable, _common_ thing for them to do; it felt intrinsically _wrong_ to do it when he was keeping this sort of secret from her. Like he was pretending to be the brother she'd always loved, an imposter.

He'd wanted to tell her _so much_. . .

. . .but he didn't want to risk it.

He _couldn't_ risk it.

He could deal with it, if his father hated him: their relationship was already fragile. Palpatine he didn't give a shuura fruit about. But if he lost Leia. . .

He couldn't.

So he kept his mouth shut, hating and hating and hating himself for the awkwardness, for the deception. . . but deceiving her all the same.

Leia had kicked him out of her room, saying she needed to get dressed and go mingle with the dignitaries they were escorting back to Coruscant—something about needing to keep up with the gossip of the court. Luke had never understood how she put up with them so well, but each to their own.

He made his way to the bridge, instead.

He was growing increasingly doubtful that Palpatine would ever let him serve on a Star Destroyer under his father. The Emperor must _know_ that they had burgeoning plans for a coup against him—what he'd said to Leia had as good as confirmed it—and Luke doubted he'd want to let either of his demon twins out of his sight for too long.

So all that meant was he had to learn as much as he could in the little time he had.

He stood on the bridge for several more hours, talking amiably with the newly-appointed Captain Piett—he was one of his father's favoured officers, if he remembered correctly—and trying to take in as much information from the man as possible.

He was standing there when he sensed the commotion.

They'd received a message saying that his father was on their way up only a few minutes before, when it started. Luke cast out his senses at the first hint of trouble, to find Vader a few corridors below him.

He frowned, and turned sharply on his heel to exit the bridge, exchanging a worried gaze with Piett.

He could sense the tension rise in the pits when he left—he wasn't sure quite _when_ he'd acquired the reputation for being a sort of good luck charm against strangulation as far as the officers under his father were concerned, but he had—and did his best to ignore it. The tension was rising inside him, as well.

He could sense another presence next to his father, stoic and steadfast but _afraid_.

It was by a turbolift almost directly between his father's quarters and the bridge—he must have been waylaid midstride—that he found them. Jade's vibrant hair was just peeking out from under her helmet, her visor closed. She stood absolutely stock still.

Vader had his hand out towards her, fingers pinched together.

The doors to the turbolift opened on that scene, but neither of them so much as twitched as it chimed.

The scene—the _familiar_ scene—sent a pang through Luke's gut. How many times had he seen this, his father hurting or even killing an Inquisitor or officer just for being in the wrong place at the wrong time? All Jade ever did was snap back when she was snapped at; she never became a threat, or even a minor hindrance. She just. . . irked him, and he wouldn't flinch at killing her.

How had Luke not seen how corrupt this Empire was before? His own father was complicit in it—his own father wouldn't object to firing on an unarmed transport, or even planet; he just objected to firing with something as crude and artificial as the Death Star.

He couldn't see Jade's face, but he could imagine it was started to turn purple. She twitched unpleasantly; he could feel her consciousness fading in the Force.

Luke cleared his throat pointedly. "Father." No response. "Let her go."

Surprisingly, Vader did—or perhaps not so surprising. He _had_ stopped before, when he realised it made Luke uncomfortable; he'd only tried to talk Luke _out of_ being uncomfortable immediately after. Now was no exception.

Jade's mask hissed open as she gasped for air, oxygen flooding back into her lungs. Unconsciously, a hand reached up to rub her throat.

"The nearest medbay is one floor down, fifth door on the right," Luke told her. "I suggest you go and make sure you haven't suffered permanent damage."

She glared at him, but it was half-hearted. She knew who was to blame. "I know how to deal with this sort of injury."

Odd. Her eyes almost looked green when she said that.

"I don't doubt it," Luke said calmly—deceptively calmly, but it wasn't a threat to Jade. It was a threat to his father. "But it's always better to be safe than sorry." A moment, then— "I'll come and talk to you after, if you want."

For one long moment, she almost seemed like she'd nod, accept the offer. But then she scowled. "I don't need your help."

His father stiffened at the perceived insult, hand rising again—

Luke seized it with the Force and pushed it down. "I know you don't," he said, "and I wasn't trying to imply that you do."

She didn't seem to know how to respond to that.

After a moment, she just stalked away, the turbolift doors closing behind her.

Luke waited for the chime before he said to his father, cuttingly calm, "I thought you were supposed to be heading up to the bridge."

Vader straightened up, caution in his voice. "It was a brief delay."

"What did she do this time? Accidentally walk past you?"

"She suggested that the launch of the _Executor_ meant I would have to spend less time of Coruscant, and that she hoped it meant she would see less of me."

"So naturally you had to nearly kill her."

"She will survive." The dismissal in his father's voice made Luke's ire rise. He tried to crush it down, veil it behind shields, but Vader picked up on it anyway. "You disagree with how I handle the Inquisitors."

Luke lifted his chin and looked his father in the eye. "Yes. I do." A moment, then he added— "And I think you already knew that."

There was no response from Vader save a tightening of his fists.

"Now," Luke continued, despite the fact he _knew _it was just going to escalate, he _knew _his relationship with his father was already strained; he _did not care— _"Don't you have a bridge crew to terrorise?"

"You disagree with how I handle them as well," Vader pushed. "You protect them, constantly."

"It's called having a conscience."

"A _conscience_?" His father sneered the word. "I did not raise you with such simplistic ideas of right and wrong."

"You're correct. For a good seven years, you didn't raise me at all."

Vader was stunned silent at that—at what it implied, that he brought it up at all. Luke had not forgiven him for lying. Not by a long shot.

But before he could reply, Luke had walked away.

He went to the medbay he'd given Jade directions to, wanting to check up on her despite what she'd said.

He wasn't surprised to find she wasn't there.

He wasn't even surprised when the medic told him she'd never turned up at all.

* * *

Leia was already lying to her brother, and she hadn't even been a Rebel spy—a _Rebel spy_, oh stars—for twenty four hours.

At least it had been a halfway-decent lie. She _had_ gone to mingle with the Imperial dignitaries. . . for a time.

Then, she was back in her quarters, compiling a formal report of all the information she knew about the Death Star to send to Sabé.

There wasn't much. She was sure Palpatine would tell her more later—she _hoped_ Palpatine would tell her more later—but for now, she had to work with what she had.

It was called the Death Star. She seen it with her own eyes. One year away from completion, it was a battle station about the size of a small moon, whose primary function was to fire on innocent planets who'd showed the slightest hint of rebellion and destroy them. This was achieved with the focusing dish observed on the upper hemisphere of the station. She didn't know _how_ they'd managed to generate that much fire power—the entire Imperial Starfleet didn't have that—but Luke had mentioned a name in their conversation earlier: Galen Erso.

The person Luke had been interrogating for details before the reveal that had changed so much.

He, her brother theorised, was important enough in the design and development of this monstrosity that he _had_ to have something to do with it. It was a shaky claim at best, but the Force spurred them both on.

So Leia typed that into her report to, though she didn't clarify what her suspicions were based on. In her experience, people were all too quick to dismiss things they didn't understand, and as much as Palpatine boasted otherwise, _no one_ understood the Force. They just trusted it.

So she was ready when the incoming comm from Sabé lit her comlink, spot on the time she'd given her. Leia answered immediately, eyes automatically scanning her surroundings for surveillance, for all that she was in her own room, in her family's own quarters.

"Leia."

_"Good. You haven't backed out?"_ It was a careful enquiry—and a necessary one, though she still took slight offence to it.

"Of course I haven't. I'm not—" She swallowed her words: _a traitor_. That was a lie. "I put a lot of thought into this. My loyalties don't change easily. Otherwise you'd have had me on Naboo."

An exhale of breath. _"Good," _Sabé said again. _"You know that I had to be sure."_

"Well, I hope you are now—"

_"I am."_

"Because I'm submitting you a report of everything I know about the Death Star," she said, already reaching to tap the necessary buttons. "I'll compile more information later on—codes, fleet movements, logistics, the like. This is all I could—"

_"Leia," _Sabé said, _"it's perfect. I can see it coming through now."_ There was a pause, then, although Leia had told her the day before— _"One year to completion?"_

"Give or take," she confirmed grimly.

_"That's. . . not very long. We'll need to find out where it's being built, see if there's any way we can sabotage it—"_

"I'll do my best."

_"Thank you," _Sabé paused, then Leia could _hear_ the smile in her face as she said, _"Fulcrum."_

_Fulcrum._

"Fulcrum," she echoed. "The point on which everything turns."

_"It's our codename—"_

"I know what it is. Ahsoka Tano came up with it." She could sense Sabé's faint surprise. "You forget—it was _my_ father on Malachor."

_"Ahsoka does not have fond memories of the event, I'm told."_

"No one involved does."

There was an awkward silence, and Leia sighed. "I need to go. I'll submit the other reports once I've written them." Sabé did not seem to be introducing her to any sort of Rebel spy protocol—at least, none as strict as the Imperial protocol she'd had hammered into her for years. Perhaps that was because a spy had to by nature have slightly more flexibility, perhaps because Sabé didn't want to scare her away too soon.

It didn't matter, either way.

_"I'll send you the codes, so you know what encryption to use when contacting me. And—" _A pause. _"Thank you, Leia. We can do so much with this. May the Force be with you."_

The comlink winked off.

Leia murmured, "May the Force be with us all."

* * *

Being on the _Executor_, as it turned out, did not exempt Leia from her politics lessons. While she had an active mission to work on, such as the Kuat Uprising or whatever Operation Eclipse was, she tended not to have any sort of lessons scheduled. She'd had a rigorous enough education until she was sixteen that it was a welcome relief once she started missions, though paradoxically it often made her want her lessons more.

She was painfully aware of her youth and inexperience when things went the slightest bit wrong. It made her want to drop herself right back in the classroom and be lectured on _what not to do_ by one astrophysicist or military tactician or diplomatic languages tutor or another.

Even so, it was standard for her lessons to be _cancelled_ when she wasn't on Coruscant, or occupied for some reason. She'd assumed the same applied to when she was on the _Executor_.

But politics lessons were different.

Because politics lessons, she received right from the top.

The _Executor_ had a throne room, as did almost all of the Imperial Navy's flagships, and it was designed much the same as all of Palpatine's others, scattered wherever they may be across the galaxy.

_However_, while the fact that this room had already taken up this much space on a ship in which space was a precious resource was indicative of its importance—her father's spacious quarters weren't even a _quarter_ of this size—it _was_ smaller than most of the throne rooms. It gave Leia a least a little more confidence, a little more courage, as she traversed it to kneel at the base of the steps to the throne.

"Rise, child." Palpatine waved his hand almost noncommittally, immediately rising himself to gesture her into the Emperor's quarters through the door behind the throne. "You are here to learn, not serve."

She gritted her teeth—_serving is all I do_—but made sure her face was blank and her shields impeccable. If _Palpatine_, of all people, was the first to discover her recent defection. . . that would be nothing short of disastrous.

He led her into a small but ostentatious room, furnished with a table and several chairs around it. Datapads and flimsi and styluses littered the top in a way that spoke of studied chaos. "Sit. After yesterday's demonstration, I thought we could start with something along those lines."

He took a seat himself. He looked comical for a moment, black robes pooling at his elbows on the table, fingers steepled, but then she reminded herself that this was _a very dangerous man_ and her mouth did not twitch into a smile.

Besides, any threat of a smile fled at what he said next. "What do you know of the Tarkin Doctrine?"

A sneer formed on her lips without consent. "Tarkin's proposal to rule through fear—he argues that fear, more than anything, will crush any rebellion and ensure the Empire continues its grip."

"Good," Palpatine praised. "And what do you think of this? The doctrine, that is," he added, "not the man. I am well aware you find him unlikeable, but you have to respect his ingenuity."

Leia begged to differ. She did not have to respect him at all.

"I think it's short-sighted," she said bluntly. Her attacks on Tarkin and the Empire's more overtly brutal policies weren't unusual in these sessions; speaking her mind here wouldn't raise suspicion. She hoped. "The more we tighten our grip, the more star systems will slip through our fingers. Eventually people will feel they have nothing left to lose, and then what will we do? It would be like a galaxy of Gerrera's Partisans—and they are troublesome enough already."

She could feel the question building in Palpatine, so she barrelled on before he interjected, prefacing her answer before he could ask. "_If_ we are to implement such drastic tactics, we have to accompany it with something that will foster loyalty as well, or only the most. . . loyal"—she stopped herself from saying _fanatical_—"Imperials will be genuinely devoted to us."

She lifted her chin, face set in a mulish expression. "Tarkin himself used to be an advocate for both the lash and the lure. I fail to see what advantages this new doctrine of his holds over his previous philosophy."

"I see." Palpatine's eyes were narrowed, but in a pleased manner. He raked his gaze over her; his nod of approval made her relax, the slightest bit. For all that it felt dirty, immoral, to say something he approved of, at least she was _doing her job_.

"And. . ." His eyes narrowed further. "What do you think of the Death Star Tarkin has built to support his doctrine?"

_Tarkin_ has built—a neat method of shifting the blame away from Palpatine, lest she disagree and the negotiations get hostile. If she agreed, she knew, he'd go right back to taking the credit for it. Palpatine was not someone who didn't plan for _all_ contingencies.

"As I said," Leia shrugged, "the lash _and_ the lure is needed. My problem with the Tarkin Doctrine isn't use of the lash—it's _overuse_ of the lash, when the lure could be more effective." It wasn't even much of a falsehood. What was a law, and the punishment for breaking it, if not at least a mild lash?

"The Death Star is a disgusting thing," she said baldly. "It's an insult to the Force, and life itself. Such a technological terror is a waste of credits and time, when one powerful Force user could, with suitable study, _theoretically_, do its job with a fraction of the effort."

"_Theoretically_," he pushed.

She didn't flinch. "Has the Death Star fired yet? Have you any proof that _it_ can do its job, beyond _theoretically_?"

His silence answered her question—as did the approving smile on his face.

"I stand by what I said. Both the lash and the lure are effective. The Death Star is, ultimately, a very severe lash. For very severe cases. . ."

She pinched her lips together briefly. She took a deep breath. She looked Palpatine in the eye.

And for the first time in her life, she flat out lied to his face.

". . .I believe the Death Star to be necessary."


	22. Return and Reveal

Time passed quickly after that.

The _Executor_ arrived on Coruscant amid pomp and ceremony the twins narrowly managed to avoid, hiding out in their respective quarters until the swarm of reporters and fanatics had died down sufficiently for them to make their run to the surface.

The moment they arrived back in the apartment, they were greeted with two stacks of datapads each. One containing details of the Eclipse investigation. The other was significantly taller, and contained all the tasks their tutors had set them to catch up on what they'd missed the last few months.

_"Homework_,_"_ Luke grumbled uncharitably. It wasn't inaccurate.

Personally, Leia thought that between them, hunting down 'terrorist' leaders, being assigned to work as an archivist and subsequently getting punched by a Rebel, travelling undercover to a pilots' academy, then helping plan and run one of the most major, ambitious Empire Day celebrations yet had been plenty of excuse not to revise how to measure parsecs without a computer. Her tutors—and Palpatine—didn't seem to share the view.

Unfortunately, there wasn't really much they could do about the Eclipse investigation—for the Empire _or_ the Rebels. All they had to go on was that one word, the little information Palpatine's torturers _and _Luke's analysis had managed to extract from Visz. They didn't even have any idea if the information on the datapad he'd been caught with was the actual information he was after, or just a cover up.

Luke had looked into interrogating him again, to see if his imprisonment had made him anymore likely to cooperate, but they both knew the odds of that. They'd seen all too many times how many of their father's targets died or went mad before they gave up anything of value, even _with_ the Force.

It seemed to be the case here: upon Luke's inquiries, they'd been informed that Lacert Visz had died under interrogation, and was no longer available for discussion.

There wasn't really anything they could do beyond task the Empire's multitude of intelligence agencies to report back anything—_anything—_found in Rebel transmissions that pertained to an "Eclipse." Which meant they had a lot more for study.

The routine she settled back into was so. . . normal for her that it was almost easy to believe nothing had changed. But they _had_.

During military tactics lessons, Leia had to refrain from asking how many of these famous manoeuvres had been thought up by a Jedi.

During history lessons, Leia had to refrain from poking holes in all of Imperial history's inconsistencies.

But politics was undoubtedly the worst. Having to learn about the corrupt policies of the cause she'd thrown her lot it with, and the virtues of the government she'd grown to despise, _at Palpatine's knee_, disgusted her day in, day out. And she had to _hide_ that disgust every time she smiled at him, every time she asked for her opinion and she lied, silver-tongued and sharp, her heart hammering and sweat painting the back of her neck with iridescence.

And then she would go home, and she would receive reports from her father about fleet movements, Palpatine's orders, whatever the memo had been about one senator or another that day. She would sit in the living room with her father and brother as they discussed plans for their coup. The firepower of the _Executor_ and the rest of Death Squadron when pitted against the Star Destroyers whose captains were loyal to Palpatine alone. The possible times to strike, when Palpatine would have his guard the lowest and there would be the lowest risk for them all. The individuals they had singled out and were approaching, trying to build a network of supporters throughout the navy and court.

"We cannot recruit any Inquisitors," her father had said firmly at the very beginning of the latter topic, with a pointed look at Luke. He'd looked almost crestfallen.

Leia wondered why. The conversation she'd had with the Sixth Sister, while he was at Skystrike, came to mind.

She almost opened her mouth to ask there and then, but the nervous look on his face when she did. . .

If she pushed him on _this_, he might push her on. . . other things. And that could only end badly. She was sure of it.

So, hating herself for all the secrets she was allowing to fester between them. . . she kept her mouth shut.

And then, after all of that, she would go to her room and write her report to Sabé.

All of this. . . It made her restless. It made her feel like she was waiting for something to happen.

And then, just when she became used to the waiting, something did.

* * *

It was about six weeks after their return to Coruscant that Luke received the first clue to what Eclipse actually was. It came in the form of Ahsoka actually comming him directly, instead of just accepted the short, scrambled reports he'd grown used to sending out.

_"This is a specific request," _she said, her voice thick through the encryption. The Fulcrum symbol hovered blue above the comlink; it had been several weeks before Luke realised it was the same symbol as the markings on her forehead. _"We need the blueprints to the central power grid on Coruscant."_

Luke frowned. "You mean, the plans Visz tried to steal a few months ago?"

_"You remember him?"_

"He punched me in the face. Of course I remember him." Not that one didn't get punched a lot in Luke's line of work, but he took specific offence to people duping him and _then_ punching him. "He was in interrogation for weeks."

Despite the encryption, he could hear the caution—and the wince—in her tone. _"Interrogation? Did he—"_

"No," he assured her. "Only one word—'Eclipse'—and none of us have any idea what it means. Leia and I have been tasked with finding that out," he said wryly, "but strangely enough, we don't seem to have met much success."

He heard her release a breath. _"Good. That— that's good. Is Visz still alive? He's a good agent, if you could by any chance get him out. . ."_

_A good agent. _Smart enough to get the jump on Luke, at least.

"I'm afraid not," he said, surprised at the genuine regret that closed his throat. "He. . . died in interrogation while I was at Kuat."

_"I see."_

"So, you want me to get hold of the plans he was trying to steal?" Luke clarified. He didn't even realise he'd fished for knowledge until after he said it; he couldn't hear the amusement in Ahsoka's voice when she spoke, but he imagined it was there.

_"Yes." _So he _had_ been trying to steal them. _"As soon as possible."_

Conveniently, Luke's datapad with all the details about the Eclipse investigation was right on hand, and the blueprints were downloaded onto that for posterity. It was ease itself to encrypt the document, then send it on to Ahsoka.

* * *

The first blip in Leia's new role was two months after their return. Unbeknownst to her, it came in the same form as it had her brother: a live comm, instead of coded messages.

_"We have a task for you," _was Sabé's opening line, and as uncomfortable as Leia still was with the idea of rebelling, she leaned forward eagerly. She was tired of this passive resistance, while she still supported the Empire everywhere except inside her heart; she wanted to do something _physical_, with a _physical impact _she could see.

"What is it?"

_"Some Rebel spies on Coruscant need an escape route; we have word that the ISB are onto them. They've completed the mission they were sent in to do, but if they get caught and it's revealed in interrogation, it will all be for nothing." _She paused. There was something painfully human in her voice as she said, _"And I don't want to lose anymore allies to the Empire."_

Leia thought briefly of her aunt and uncle, dead nearly eleven years. Killed by the Empire—by her _father_.

If there had ever been a question about whether or not she would do it, it was answered now. "How can I help?"

_"We don't think the ISB are sure who they are, or that they're preparing to leave, but they _will_ once word comes through that servants in the Imperial Palace were seen trying to barter passage off-world. We can't risk them being caught like that."_

"So you want me to fly them off-world?"

_"No; that could risk compromising your cover, and you're one of the best agents we have." _Leia felt oddly touched, for all that she knew it was a cold, hard fact. No one else of her rank had defected.

In her distraction she missed the '_one of_' part.

_"There are several skilled pilot among them; they just need a ship. I was hoping you could provide them with one."_

"We have several, but my father will notice if one goes missing; I don't have any of my—" She froze. Yes she did. "I've got it. Tell your spies to get to these coordinates on the planet, and open landing bay 1569 with the code two-Aurek-Esk-three-seven-Thesh."

_"Bay 1569. Code two-Aurek-Esk-three-seven-Thesh."_

"Exactly. There's a ship there that they can use. Make sure they remove the Imperial insignia from the transponder, but otherwise that ship is fast for her size, has incredible shields, and is completely nondescript."

_". . .is it the ship you flew to Naboo."_

Leia wrinkled her nose at how easily she'd guessed that. "Yes. My family assume I sold it when I returned."

_"Very well. Bay 1569. Code two-Aurek-Esk-three-seven-Thesh. Ex-smuggler's ship, ex-Imperial ship; make sure to remove the Imperial transponder." _A pause, as Leia assumed she wrote all that down. _"Thank you."_

"It's. . . my pleasure. And, tell them—" She swallowed. "May the Force be with them."

* * *

When Luke heard that the _Hidden Star_ had been stolen right from the bay Leia had docked it in, he had a few questions.

The first was: "Didn't you say you'd _sold_ that thing?"

"I told you I was _going _to sell it. It was a perfectly good ship! I wasn't gonna sell it for anything less than it's worth, and I haven't found a serious buyer yet."

Luke was at least seventy percent sure that was a lie, but that large margin for error just showed how much he and Leia had drifted apart recently. He hated it, and the pang in his chest distracted him for a moment.

Then he shook his head, "Anyway, get in your fighter. We need to go after it." Not that he had any intention of _catching_ the fleeing Rebel spies—being complicit in the interrogation and torture of such vital agents might not go down well with the Rebellion—but if they didn't at least _try_ to catch them. . .

"Why do _we_ have to? Isn't that what the fleet constantly hanging over Coruscant is for?"

"Sure. But you know the average competency of some Imperial forces, and that was _your _ship they escaped in. Do you really want to be the one to explain to Palpatine why that was?"

Leia grimaced—for an instant, she looked genuinely afraid. "He would _kill_ me."

"I'll cry at your funeral."

"That's so gratifying." She rolled her eyes. "Come on, idiot, get in the TIEs."

"Do you think Father would mind if—"

"Yes. Yes he would."

So they shot out of the atmosphere above Coruscant in standard TIEs, tweaked by their father slightly—he'd never let them fly in something that didn't have _some_ sort of shields—but without the speed and weapons capabilities of a TIE Advanced or Interceptor or Defender.

Luke made a mental note to get hold of one of them.

But it didn't matter. They had each other.

_"There," _Leia's voice came over the comms, _"the _Hidden Star_, straight ahead. They're powering up to jump."_

"Intel suspects the spies aren't taking any important information to the Rebels, they're just trying to escape. We need them alive to find out what they've leaked already. Are there any Interdictors nearby?"

_"Not above Coruscant."_

"So we have to stop them from jumping, _without_ harming any of the crew, and hope a Star Destroyer gets a tractor beam locked on them in time?" He could hear the scepticism in his own voice, for all that it hid the genuine relief he was feeling. If it was a difficult task on their parts already, Palpatine wouldn't punish them for being unusually incompetent and letting them escape.

Theoretically.

Only one way to find out.

Without any verbal warning—Leia needed none—Luke shot forward. She followed suit, raking her first barrage over the _Star_, watching pockets of fire bloom along their shields.

No damage was taken.

* * *

Leia had just the right amount of focus to recognise that Luke was hailing the other Star Destroyers in the area, but she also knew that by the time they got here, it would be too late. Conveniently, it was up to her.

The _Star_ swung round rapidly when she fired again, those weapons Leia had taken such pride in being brought to bear against _her_ in a storm that had her darting away like a firefly to escape, her shields sizzling with the impact. She sensed more than heard Luke's clipped negotiations with the Destroyers' captains—politics as usual, then—come to an end, then he joined her flank.

Together, they engaged.

The _Hidden Star_ escaped anyway.

* * *

Palpatine had been unimpressed.

_Beyond_ unimpressed. Not only had several spies been operating in his palace, right under the noses of his greatest military minds, but they had also out-flown two of his greatest agents.

He did not hesitate to make that displeasure known.

It had been a short electrocution, compared to the first one Luke had borne, but he was still furious that Leia had been punished at all. Naturally, he was angry that Palpatine had electrocuted _him_, but Leia had done _nothing wrong_. She'd fired on that ship with every ounce of skill she had. _She_ was not the reason it had failed; _she_ was not the traitor.

Luke was.

The thought sobered him. His actions had caused his sister just as much pain as they'd caused him, today, and she had had no say in it. It racked him with guilt.

Leia could sense it, he knew. She kept giving him odd looks, sending warm, concerned inquiries along their bond. _What's wrong?_

What could he say?

_I betrayed you, Father and everything you stand for because of a rotting old corpse we're planning on deposing anyway and a woman who abandoned us when we were children_? That wouldn't go down well, he sensed. And. . .

He couldn't bear to see the rejection in her eyes.

When they returned to the apartment after dropping in at a medbay, he'd headed straight for his bedroom, mumbling some excuse about having studying to catch up on. It wasn't a _lie_, he _did_ have work for military tactics, but he found he couldn't focus. He ended up staring at the holo image of a walker for who knew how long, not really thinking of anything at all.

"Luke?"

He started, the datapad sliding off his lap. Leia caught it with the Force and floated it back up to him. He accepted it wordlessly.

She sat down on the bed beside him. "Something's bothering you."

He didn't answer, still staring at the datapad. The holo of the walker, caught with one of its long, spindly legs raised; mid-step. "You know, they really need to change the AT-ATs' designs. Rebel speeders come equipped with tow cables. A savvy pilot and his gunner would be able to wrap it up and trip it over with ease. I'm surprised they haven't done so already."

"Not everyone's as smart as you, Luke," Leia said. "But I am, and I know when you're avoiding my question."

He let out a sigh.

He couldn't tell her.

He had to tell her.

He _couldn't tell her_—

"I—" He swallowed. "I. . . never told you what happened at Skystrike."

She folded her hands in her lap, fixing him with a patient look. He swallowed again.

He couldn't tell her. He couldn't tell her.

He had to tell her.

Faint tremors still wracked his body from Palpatine's. . . _displeasure_; she tried to hide them, but he could see them in Leia as well.

It wasn't just him paying the price for his treason anymore. It was his sister.

And that was something he could not accept.

Whether or not she hated him. Whether or not she turned him in, and everything he'd given the Rebellion would be for naught.

He had to tell her.

"I. . . You know that they got away. The defectors got away." It was a statement, not a question, but she nodded in response anyway. "I. . . didn't fail to stop them."

She delicately arched one eyebrow. "It wasn't your fault? Was it Pryce?"

"No." He swallowed again. His throat felt like the Dune Sea at high noon. "I was in the corridor with them. I'd sealed the doors shut. And then. . . I let them go."

The words dropped like a stone. The silence was deafening.

Leia took a deep breath. "Well," she commented. Her tone was sharp, knife-like, but that knife was not turned on him. Not just yet. "You went from shouting at me about treason to committing it yourself real fast."

He flinched at that word. "It _wasn't_ treason!" he defended. Her glance was sceptical. "At least. . . not yet."

"_Yet_?"

He flinched. He hadn't meant to say that.

But. . . in for a credit, in for the pot, he supposed. He had to tell her.

"Ahsoka Tano made contact with me after the event, and was trying to convince me to. . . turn traitor"—he had to prise the word out of his gums—"but I didn't buy it! Not until. . ."

He trailed off.

His mind was still locked down tight, but Leia managed to guess, with a certainty that unnerved him, "Until the Death Star."

He jerked his head up. "How did you—"

"Because, Luke," she reached for his hand and squeezed it in hers, a smile of joy and familiarity and _relief_ breaking the strain on her face, "that was when I defected as well_._"

_That was when I defected as well_

Defection.

It was the first time he'd heard it aloud in regards to. . . all of this.

He shook his head, "You—" He didn't have any words for it. But. . .

Something ballooned in his chest.

He'd told her. _He'd told her._ And she wasn't looking at him in disgust or heartbreak; she was looking at him with _happiness_, the same relief he now felt. She— His sister—

He lunged forward, throwing his arms around her neck and burying his face in her shoulder. She laughed wetly; a moment later, her arms came round him and her head was to his chest. They were both crying.

"This isn't what I expected when I finally told you," she whispered against his shirt. It broke his heart.

He said, "_Likewise_," and felt her smile almost giddily.

He drew back after a moment, and wiped a tear from her cheek with his thumb. Even as he met her eye, smiling, another one spilled out.

"What was it like for you?" _What changed _your _mind? What made you go _that_ far?_

She made to open her mouth—then paused. Leaned forward instead until they were forehead to forehead, the heat from her mind seeping into his.

"Like this," she breathed.

She brought down those painstakingly constructed shields, one by one, and showed him. A moment later, he showed her in return.

* * *

Imperial censorship was tough, even in the highest echelons. Luke and Leia could hardly have known while they discussed treason, democracy and the downfall of a tyrant, it was in the ex-apartment of Padmé Amidala.

It was in the apartment where the Delegation of 2,000—and thus, the Rebellion—had been born.

* * *

They talked about it for hours afterwards. Hours and hours and hours, comparing the points that had changed everything for them, the ways they'd been persuaded, the information they'd passed on.

"At least not all of it was identical," Leia had laughed when she heard Luke's summaries, "otherwise they might have been thinking they only needed one of us."

"Or that it was a twin-bond thing."

"Also true."

"But I would never," Luke affected, hand to his chest. "Who in the _galaxy_ cares _one whit _about the gossip of the Imperial Court?"

She shoved at his chest, well aware that he was joking but rising to the bait anyway. "Hey! It's good for blackmail, infiltration and just knowing your enemies!"

"Perhaps." He sniffed haughtily, making her laugh harder. "But still. . . _gossip_. . ."

After the first half hour, they figured they should alert their respective contacts that they had each found out about the other—security purposes, and all—and scrambled to send short, encoded messages that probably did nothing to convey the sheer _joy_ they both felt at the news. Leia could feel Luke's even more strongly than her own, their Force bond alight and free of awkwardness and secrets in a way it hadn't been for _months_.

She finally felt like she could breathe again.

The euphoria buoyed her long into the evening, a grin forming on her face when she so much as shared a glance with her brother. She felt so _happy_.

Naturally, it all came crashing down only a few hours later.

And naturally, it was her father—inadvertently or not—who destroyed it.

They were at dinner, and Leia was chomping on her steak with an enthusiasm she had lacked, recently. Vader—who didn't eat, but sat with them for the purposes of being a healthy, sociable father—commented, "You seem happier."

She nodded idly, sharing another glance with Luke.

Vader glanced between them, perplexed. "I had thought," he said, a little more delicately, "that after the Rebels' escape, and your talk with the Emperor. . ."

Leia's fork stilled. Luke flinched. They didn't want to think about that.

Vader noticed, and she felt an intense surge of protectiveness from him. It would have made her smile again, did she not have one horrible thought in her mind: it wouldn't last.

The moment he learnt that both of his children had betrayed him, it would shatter his heart.

He'd already said that their mother had betrayed him. . .

He read her mood change, and misinterpreted it. "He will not touch you again," he declared fiercely. "I promise you that, young ones."

But Luke had put down his fork, shaking his head. "You can't promise that, Father. Not until after the coup. You can't. . ." He worked the words in his mouth. ". . .raise his suspicions like that."

". . .perhaps not," Vader conceded, though the words seemed to have been ripped from his vocoder. "But he is not inclined to punish you again for _this_ incident. He already believes there are more spies in the Palace, highly placed, who allowed them to escape."

Leia choked on her food. She exchanged an alarmed glance with Luke.

Vader paused, tilting his helmet at the two of them. Kriff.

Well, he'd misread their unease before. Leia could cover up their slip by prodding him to do the same now.

"_More_ Rebels?" she got out, faux horror coating her voice. She kicked Luke's under the table; he assumed a similarly horrified and disgusted expression.

Their father sat back, mollified. "Indeed. _Someone _had to have leaked the codes to get onto your ship, after all. The ISB have apparently been less than thorough in rooting them out."

"Big surprise there," Luke muttered. Leia was surprised at how calm he could act under the circumstances, but she supposed the distaste for the ISB for real. _Especially_ after what he'd shown her had happened at Skystrike.

"Perhaps not." Vader's mask tilted back down, towards their meals, and Leia picked up her utensils again. "But rest assured, those responsible _will_ be caught and punished."

Leia clenched her fist around her fork, and stubbornly avoided Luke's gaze.

"It is only a matter of time."


	23. Mirror Shards

A few more weeks passed. It was late evening, and shadows were just starting to cloak the buildings around the apartment. Luke was in the middle of a particularly thorny essay about the invention of the Marg Sabl and its strengths and weaknesses, amusing himself with wondering whether Ahsoka would consider it a breach of protocol if he commed her just to ask about it. She'd invented the manoeuvre, after all.

Perhaps it was because he was thinking about her; perhaps it was because he was just distracted at that moment. Still, that moment coincidentally happened to be the moment he noticed her presence on the planet.

She was nearby—that was the only reason he noticed her. Leia, sitting on the sofa opposite him, glanced up, but she clearly didn't recognise the presence. "Who's that?"

He put his datapad to the side. Ahsoka was lucky they lived so far from the Palace, and she was lucky their father was on a short excursion to Alderaan for a few days. It was unlikely either Vader or Palpatine could sense her at this distance, not among the billions of minds on the planet and the chiaroscuro of them all.

"Ahsoka," he said, frowning and reaching out. _You shouldn't be here._

Her mind was warm when it reached out; it was oddly jarring. He'd never realised, until he met her, just how _cold_ everyone around him was—including Leia. _No,_ she agreed, _but I figured this was something I should explain in person. Bring your sister._

Luke looked up at Leia, who was still watching him with furrowed brows. He pushed himself up, swung his legs off the table, and said, "She wants to talk to us both."

Ahsoka had decided to climb to some irritating landing pad again, but at least this time the walkway was wide enough to accommodate a speeder. Luke didn't have to lead Leia through the rigmarole that was jumping from strut to strut; they just flew right over and settled down a few metres away from where she was.

She sat on the walkway cross-legged, in a loose meditation pose, her hands loose and relaxed on her knees. Her twin lightsabers were prominent at her side.

Upon their approach, she opened her eyes and tilted her head towards them, gaze resting curiously on Leia in particular.

Leia was staring at her as well. "Ahsoka Tano."

"Leia Skywalker," Ahsoka replied easily. "Pleasure to meet you."

"What is this about?"

He and Leia said it at the same time—they exchanged grins while Ahsoka laughed. She clambered to her feet, and turned to face them fully.

Luke tilted his head back to meet her eyes, suddenly aware that the two of them, as fairly diminutive humans, were tiny compared to an adult Togruta.

"Operation Eclipse," she said simply.

Luke sucked in a breath.

Ahsoka cast him an amused glance, but she addressed Leia when she said, "Your brother tells me you've both been assigned to this case?" Leia nodded. "What does the Empire know about it?"

"Not much," Leia admitted.

"Good. Padmé's been working on this for years. Saw's been continually on her case for not taking enough action because she never seems to _do_ anything, all our resources are diverted towards this. If it was discovered now. . ."

Luke was itching to ask, but he didn't. Ahsoka would tell him everything he didn't to know; it was a security hazard, otherwise. He'd just have to trust that. . . his mother. . . knew what she was doing.

Huh. He'd never directly acknowledged her as _his mother_ in such a familial way before.

Leia, however, was not as patient as him. She crossed her arms across her chest. "And what do you want us to know about it?"

"We're going to bomb the central power grid on Coruscant."

Leia and Luke exchanged a look.

"Well then," Luke commented, "a guess I made a few months ago might be more accurate than we thought."

Leia grumbled, "I hate that you were right."

"You _guessed_ this?"

"It was a possibility. It never went into any official reports; they're for hard evidence and occasionally premonitions from the Force, not hunches."

Ahsoka sighed. "Well, you were correct. We want to take out the central power grid, take down the power for most of the planet, then take the planet while it's still dark. Without power, its defences might be severely compromised."

"What about emergency power?"

"It takes a few minutes to kick in, and is fairly minimal. If our attack is swift enough, we catch the Imperials off guard so that when it floods back in, we still have the upper hand. And," she added quietly, "the infiltration team will hopefully have taken out Palpatine by then."

Leia thought about it. A planet—a beacon of millions of lights—going dark for minutes on end, before the light returned and everything was the same, but different.

She said, "Eclipse."

Ahsoka nodded.

Luke shook his head. "It has its merits, but it won't work. The Palace itself is on a separate grid—"

"Our escapee spies from a few weeks ago"—she shot Leia a grin—"have planted their own little surprises on the Palace's power generators. We just need _someone_ who has a high enough clearance to get to the control room and trigger it."

Luke blinked, knowing what she meant and getting a little thrill from it.

Leia asked, "If they're disabled by the time of the attack?"

"The infiltrators knew their stuff. With any luck, they'll have hidden them well enough that they aren't found for several more years. Erso and Andor are some of the best the Partisans and the rest of the Rebellion have to offer."

_Erso_. Luke squished down on the recognition the name evoked in him. He'd think about it later.

Instead, he asked quietly, "And the fleet?" Ahsoka winced, and he pushed, "How are you gonna get past them? Even if they're in the Outer Rim at whatever point you choose to attack, they'll be here within days, and you will not be able to hold Coruscant for long."

Ahsoka was silent for a moment.

Luke felt Leia look at him, concerned, but he didn't look back.

Finally, Ahsoka said, "Anakin controls the fleet."

_That_ was not what Luke had been expecting. He frowned. "And. . .?"

"His capacity for attachment is. . . known to us. It was partly what got us into this situation with the Empire in the first place."

Luke's eyebrows flew up. _That_ was a story he had not heard. But. . . "So?"

"He loved your mother with every fibre of his being, back when he stilled called himself Anakin Skywalker. Padmé's original plan was to reveal that she was alive at an opportune moment and. . . persuade him to stand down." Ahsoka shifted, folding her hands behind her back. She didn't meet Luke's stare. "The Anakin I knew would have done it in a heartbeat. He would have done anything for her."

"He won't now."

Luke, jerked out of his slightly-aghast, slightly-impressed reverie, looked at his sister. Her arms were folded across her chest.

She said simply, "He won't. He loves the Empire, he's given everything he has to it. He won't give it up for a woman who let him believe she was dead for nearly twenty years."

Her voice was confident, and her shields were tight. Luke was fairly sure Ahsoka couldn't sense the uncertainty she was feeling, but he could.

He reached out to rest one hand on her shoulder. Warm, comfortable, solid. She relaxed slightly.

Ahsoka narrowed her eyes at him. "You told me, with certainty, that if it came down to it he would choose you two over the Empire."

Luke flinched at the memory. It had been more attack at his mother than defence of his father. But it was true.

Leia thought so too. "Well, _we_ are a different story. He'd do it for us."

"So he loves you more than Padmé?"

"No." They said it in unison; it was true. He was too reluctant to talk about their mother, in too much pain, for him to love her anything less than life itself.

But that was the problem, wasn't it? There was too much pain. There was too much to ever forgive. There wasn't with the two of them.

_But if he finds out we betrayed him?_

Luke crushed the thought violently. Now. . . was not the time to think about that. There might _never_ be a time to think about that.

Ahsoka held up her hands. "Alright, alright. I don't understand. But I need to know one thing: Would he do it for you?"

Luke grimaced. Shared a glance with Leia. Swallowed.

". . .probably."

Ahsoka nodded. "Good," she said grimly, "because in light of recent events, you're the ones we're relying on to talk him round."

Luke was left genuinely stunned for a moment.

Leia found her voice first. "_What_? You want us to—"

"Leia," Ahsoka interrupted, infuriatingly calmly. "This is a major military operation, one Padmé's been developing for _years_. This is why she left you on Tatooine: so she could devote her time to _this_, and dissolve the Empire, and make a more peaceful galaxy for you to grow up in." Leia flinched back; Luke moved his hand from her left shoulder to her right, so he was hugging her to his side. "Every mission to rescue pilots with Rebel sympathies"—a glance at Luke—"every spy placed in the Kuat shipyards"—back to Leia—"and every moment spend building the Rebellion into a credible threat, has all led up to this. This is _going_ to happen, with or without you. But without you. . . it will fail."

Luke was frozen. He wasn't sure whether he was holding Leia up, or she was holding him up. He couldn't move a muscle.

Ahsoka sighed. "Just. . . think about it," she offered. "The Rebellion needs you—we need your information, we need your efforts alongside everyone else's, and we need your father as well. If we take Coruscant within the next year, this Death Star will never been unleashed. Tarkin can be removed from power. We can make things _right_.

"I'll be back within a few days to hear your formal decision on the matter—there's someone else I'll have with me then, as well. He wants to talk to you. I. . .

"I'm sorry I have to force you into this position. But one thing I'm _not_ sorry about, is that it will be _over soon_." She smiled, a little sadly. "One way or another."

* * *

Luke was on edge for days. The knowledge that his sister was supporting him eased the burden somewhat—they could share the pressure, as they'd shared everything since they were born—but still. The thought that Palpatine was now looking for a Rebel spy highly placed in the Empire was bad enough. The thought that he was being asked to betray his father while he was at it. . .

But he had already betrayed his father just by doing this, hadn't he?

And his father had betrayed _him_ long ago. And his sister. And his mother.

_Force_, their family was a mess.

So when Palpatine talked to him amiably in the throne room one day, he couldn't force himself to relax. The conversation was a mocking parody of the one they'd had after he'd electrocuted him for the first time; Luke let some of that comparison leak past his shields and spotted the moment Palpatine recognised it, the attempt at a warmth smile on his face shifting to something a little more smug.

Let him think _that_ was why Luke was tense. If it distracted from the real reason. . .

"So, my boy," Palpatine asked to begin it, gesturing Luke to sit down on the steps—_just like last time_—and sitting down next to him. There were a deplorable lack of chairs in the throne room. "How go your studies?"

It wasn't an unusual question. Palpatine had checked in with them often over the years, prodded them to keep speaking about their interests and fears and just _talking_ to them. Getting to know them. It had seemed like a grandfatherly act when they were little.

Now Luke understood it was about keeping your friends close. . . and your enemies closer.

He could manipulate them all the better if he _knew them_, after all.

Luke said, "Well, Master. For all that it's difficult adjusting back to the classroom again." He tried to make it sound like a joke, and could not believe he'd ever thought that the smile forming on Palpatine's face could be kind.

The conversation continued, back and forth, back and forth, and the whole time Palpatine didn't so much as let a _hint_ of suspicion slip. He didn't even mention Luke introducing himself to Erso as _Skywalker_ at Kuat; Luke toyed with the idea that he might not have heard of it, then instantly discarded the thought. There was no way he _hadn't _heard of it. He had so many spies and informers, desperate to sell anyone out and climb to the top, and the bridge of the _Devastator_ had been full of them that day.

Which made his silence all the more suspicious.

Kriff.

But the conversation went well. Luke was careful not to let even a crack form in his shields; despite his tension, he was cordial and even managed to make a few jokes; when he stood up to bow at the end, he was as subservient and obsequious as ever. He loathed it, but he performed it.

When he turned to stride out of the room, he felt those yellow eyes burning a hole in his back.

He strode faster.

His heart jack-hammered against his ribs. He paused for a moment, once he was outside, but he could still feel the gazes of the red guards on him, searching.

He kept walking.

He would argue that he had no control over where his legs took him next, muscle memory guiding them more than logical thought, but that was only part true. The truth was, he needed to settle his mind somehow. He needed to do something simple, repetitive, but that still took up most of his thoughts.

He could have headed for the training room, but he didn't want to run into his father by accident; if he sensed Luke was stressed enough to train in the rooms of the Imperial Palace instead of waiting until he got home, he would certainly come check on him. Luke didn't think he could face him—not with Ahsoka's request hanging over his head.

The second option that came to mind was one he would have sooner died than volunteer for, six months ago. But things had changed since then.

The Archives' blue light was a lot softer than he remembered.

He walked right up to Horada's desk and wasted no time in holding out his lightsaber, emitter facing towards him. She didn't respond at first, slowly moving those ice-pale eyes up the document she was reading before they settled on Luke.

No shock passed her face. Jocasta Nu had broken into these Archives once, had a lightsaber duel with both his father and the Grand Inquisitor, and deleted all the data the Jedi had collected, leaving the Empire to reconstruct everything from scratch. One arrogant teenager changing his ways was nothing to her.

She just raised one eyebrow, and took the proffered lightsaber.

"Is there anything you'd like me to file?" Luke asked.

A faint smile curled her lips—the first Luke had ever seen on her. It made him feel like he'd achieved something.

She jerked her head towards an empty desk halfway down the room. "Cynthia's ill today. Take her workload, and you'll have saved her—and me—several headaches for tomorrow."

He nodded, and got to work.

It _was_ soothing, returning to the job that had been foisted on him all those months ago. Palpatine had done it to crush his dreams of serving at his father's side, teach him obedience. All it had taught him was patience. How to search for what he wanted to know. How to wait for the right moment to strike.

And for all that he knew that raw facts could be manipulated, falsified and spun to suit any agenda. . . it was soothing to have something _reliably true_ under his hands. Horada was meticulous, if nothing else: she valued honesty.

It was almost like it was fated, what happened next. After the déjà vu of his conversation with Palpatine, and coming to the Archives, it was only natural that she turned up as well.

Mara Jade was perusing the shelves when she paused, goggling at Luke with unabashed shock. He smiled faintly—calmly—at her, before turning his gaze back to the datapad.

A moment later, there was the scrape of a chair being pulled up in front of it, and Jade dropped herself into it. "Never thought I'd see you in here again."

It was a friendly enough opening, almost unheard of for an Inquisitor. Luke desperately hoped it was because they were developing something akin to a friendship, and not because she wanted something from him.

"Well, what can I say." He shrugged, waving the datapad in his hand, and drawled, "I've always had a thirst for knowledge."

"Aren't you supposed to be in lessons right now?"

"I said knowledge, not writing essays until my hand drops off."

She laughed. It was an odd, nervous sound—like she didn't know quite what to do with it—but it _was_ genuine. Luke wondered how often an Inquisitor actually laughed genuinely. "Politics?"

"Military strategy," he grumbled. "The _Marg Sabl_." That particular essay had proved as difficult as Leia when she hadn't had enough sleep.

"I see." A brief silence fell, and he could tell she was just as uncomfortable as he was, because she ploughed on, "What have you learnt here?"

"Well, for one thing," he said, glancing at the datapad in his hand, "there was apparently an exploratory vessel sent to seek out the Chiss homeworld once that disappeared, then reappeared on the other side of the galaxy, with none of the two hundred thousand crew members having the faintest clue how that got there."

"Fascinating. Reading up on conspiracy theories now?"

"I wish. _This_ datapad," he waved to another, "is about how the population of ryoo flowers on Naboo has fluctuated in the last two hundred years. Apparently it surged shortly after Queen Amidala's peace treaty with the Gungans. Perhaps the Gungans who moved to Theed were especially fond of it."

He realised after he said it that he probably shouldn't have mentioned Amidala, but if she was fazed, she didn't show it.

"Really?"

"Really."

She smirked a little, but in a cheerful way; for one breathless moment, Luke thought her eyes looked green.

But then she looked up at him and they were as yellow as acid, and he let out a breath. _Must have been a trick of the light._

"Anything _else_ interesting you've found?"

Luke was still staring at her eyes, trying to find that angle they'd looked green from. He could have sworn he hadn't imagined it.

But if he hadn't. . . that meant. . .

He admitted quietly, "I found the records for the Inquisitorius. Where each member was. . . acquired."

She froze.

He continued, "You're on there, if— if you're interested. Your birth name, parents—"

"Don't." The mask hissed shut, and Luke fought the urge to grimace. "I am the Sixth Sister. All that I am is the Emperor's. That is all that is important."

He inclined his head in acquiescence. "As you wish. I just thought you might be curious."

She pushed herself to her feet, a little too quickly. Luke caught the chair with the Force before it could clatter to the floor—he'd just gotten on Horada's good side, he didn't want to ruin that so quickly.

Jade didn't notice. She stormed off too quickly to.

Though, Luke noted with melancholy amusement, she had to pause to retrieve her lightsaber from Horada first.

"Care to tell me what that was about?" said a voice.

Luke yelped—of all the call backs he'd experienced in one day, Leia _had_ to rejuvenate _that one_ as well.

He scowled at her as she stole Jade's vacated chair. "Where were you hiding?"

"Behind that shelf." Leia nodded to it, the scrappy bun on her head bouncing with the motion. "You must have been _very_ distracted not to notice me."

"I suppose I was."

Leia's eyes flicked to the door, slamming shut behind Jade, then back to him. "Yes," she said. "You were."

He fidgeted. "Don't give me that look."

"You're insane."

"I know."

"She's an _Inquisitor_."

"I know."

"And—what? Telling her you care enough about her individuality to have found her _name_?" She shook her head. "You're _insane_." _You're going to make Palpatine suspicious._

He hung his head. "I know."

She watched him for a second more.

_But—_

She raised an eyebrow. _But _what_?_

_Leia. . ._

Luke reflexively glanced behind him and leaned forward, for all that here was no way anyone could hear him anyway.

_. . .I think he already is._

* * *

His vision was clouded.

Palpatine leaned back on his throne, frowning. Luke's tension could well stem from the simple fear of being in his presence in such a carefully orchestrated reminder of the last time he'd failed him—certainly, Palpatine had every intention of using the boy's natural empathy, fear, intuition to draw him further into his trap. His visions of Vader's death had only grown stronger in the six months since he first voiced them, and since then he'd been greeted with. . . snippets more, of a future he was _very_ eager to see come to pass.

He saw Luke, glaring at his father and pledging his loyalty to Palpatine above all others.

He saw Vader, kneeling raggedly on the throne room floor, all the fight beaten out of him.

He saw Leia, fury in her snarl and desperation in her scream as she brought her crimson lightsaber crashing down against her brother's. . .

. . .and he saw _her_, the woman who had started this all, hanging her head and weeping for all she had wrought.

_That_ was the sweetest vision of all.

But the Force wasn't feeding him these snippets with the usual steady flow, the certainty. He wasn't receiving them with clarity or context. They were just that: snippets. _Blurry_ snippets, hinting at a greater story to come but hinting just as vehemently that there was far more to it than the images he grasped.

His vision was clouded, and he _didn't like it_.

There was a spy in his palace.

_Multiple_ spies, for all he knew; yes, the Force assured him so. How many? Two—three? That felt about right. . .

How important were they, that they blurred his vision so? Because _they_ were the thorn that the fabric of the universe snagged on; they, he could feel, were the tipping point on which this future he glimpsed rested.

The future he desired so fiercely was dependent on a handful of Rebels. It was. . . irksome. He didn't even know who they were.

So he meditated.

Ever a pleasant experience, he exhaled euphorically as the dark side rushed through him, made him feel. . . _alive_. . . in a way he rarely did. It sustained his ailing body, soothed his aches, but that was the least of what it offered. Pain was nothing to him, compared to the _power_ he could achieve.

His own talents in the Force were significant. But as always, when he revelled in the power he could touch, he reached out to remind himself of his most devoted servants and acolytes—and his most powerful.

After all, ruling the galaxy was nothing. True power was being able to exert his will and control over every free thinking being inside it, including. . .

He found Vader first, if only by virtue of sheer strength in the Force and their bond. His apprentice was the customary storm of anger and hatred, tearing through the crew of his still-new flagship in orbit. Tearing through the crew, and removing several of Palpatine's more efficient spies, he should note; he would deal with that later. _That_ was one game he especially enjoyed playing.

Luke and Leia came second, again by dint of their enormous potential. Leia was deep in her studies in their mother's apartment, which was where Luke _should_ be. . . but he wasn't. In fact, he was much closer, mind ruffled but slowly soothing. . .

Well. That boy had proven a surprising capacity for surprising him recently. Palpatine wasn't sure whether to be amused, intrigued or threatened by it.

Why would he willingly return to the Archives?

_Luke Skywalker_, he had reportedly introduced himself to Galen Erso as, as nosy yet self-conscious as an eighteen-year-old could be. He was a talented agent; he must have known that name would make it back to Palpatine.

But what did it mean?

He had his suspicions about what Leia had truly done while she was on Tatooine. Her muted reaction to his _twin suns_ comment had tipped that off to him, and the fact Luke knew his name was _Skywalker_ was proof enough. Vader would never have divulged that information voluntarily.

He had, even, begun to use the knowledge to drag Leia away from her father and towards him. She was certainly feeling angry with him, betrayed, lied to, and she had always been the twin who looked up to him the most. She was the one most likely to pledge unconditional obedience to him, above all of her beloved family members.

Strange, then, that the vision had shown _Luke_ doing so. . .

He frowned. Shook his head. No, he was thinking about this the wrong way: it was not one twin or the other. He could have both, _and_ the father, and he could even break their _attachment_ to each other while he was doing it. They were not the issue right now, however oddly they'd been acting due to their familial squabbles; what concerned him was the identity of these spies.

So he moved his focus off them, gladly. They'd always been annoyingly light in the Force, and eleven years on the nests of shadows that were Mustafar and Coruscant hadn't changed that. They simply _loved_ each other too much. He'd do his best to change that in the future, but again: this wasn't his focus right this moment. They were powerful anyway.

His Inquisitors were harder to sense, but if anything they were more satisfying than the Skywalkers. _They_ would never rebel against him, did not have even the slightest thought of it. He had perfect control of a slavishly loyal, ruthless killing squad to carry out his bidding. While he thoroughly enjoyed playing with the Skywalkers when the Inquisitors' flat state of mind grew dull, they provided the blueprint and guide for what he hoped the twins would be in the near future: they were _his_.

Only. . . not _all_ of them had that flat state of mind that bored him so easily.

He frowned, and pushed harder, eager to see if perhaps he could find some entertainment among them after all. The mind in question was racked with the same constantly exploding nebula of anger, hatred and suffering that he taught all of his disciples—the broken and confused made the best followers—but also, more peculiarly, _guilt_. Confusion. Desire, in that it was a personal, selfish desire, and not just pure ambition.

He reached out to that strange, strange mind, and sifted through it without resistance. Whether she was consciously aware of her master's presence or not, she bowed to it.

What he found allowed him to fill in the pieces of the puzzle he'd been missing. And then. . .

. . .the future began to resolve itself, _clearly_, twisting into bright, multi-coloured possibilities heretofore undreamt of. . .

His fingers ghosted over the button for the comlink embedded in the arm of his throne. Eyes still shut, he waited for the call to connect.

_"Your Majesty?"_

"Summon Lord Vader, his children, and the Sixth Sister to my main throne room," he ordered. "I would speak with them immediately."

The man didn't question him. He never did. Instant, unswerving obedience; that was what the Emperor craved, and that was what he would exact from his followers, one way or another.

He steepled his fingers in his lap, and finally opened his eyes, resting them on the closed doors to the throne room with a barely-restrained anticipation.


	24. The Point On Which Everything Turns

Leia had just finished and submitted her report to Sabé when the message came in, commanding her into Palpatine's presence at once.

Her heart was hammering against her ribs for some reason, but she didn't object. Didn't think about why she might be nervous. Didn't so much as _consider_ Luke's kind, sweet, compassionate, _insanely reckless_ behaviour with the Sixth Sister, and how it might reflect on them if it got around.

They _could not seem suspicious._ Not now. Not with everything so swiftly coming to a head.

She didn't do any of that. She just changed into something a little more presentable, in the blues and blacks spectrum she always wore, and set off.

She met Luke in the throne room proper, having been the last to be admitted. Him, her father, and—unnervingly enough—the Sixth Sister were already standing before the throne, Luke and Vader on one side, the Sixth Sister on the other. The division between them was stark.

Palpatine was taut on his throne, which meant he was excited about something. He smiled at her as she came in, and it made her skin crawl.

"Ah, Leia," he greeted. "We can begin."

* * *

Leia bowed briefly when she reached the dais, then took her place next to Luke, running a critical eye over him before she turned back to face Palpatine.

He tried not to grimace. He was well aware he was attending an audience with the Emperor dressed in clothes wrinkled and dusty from an afternoon in the Archives, but it wasn't like he could have gone home when he received the summons!

"I have good news, my friends," Palpatine intoned, his entire body language focusing on Luke and his family. He didn't so much as glance at Jade—she hadn't even been allowed to stand from the kneeling position she held on the floor.

Again, Luke had to fight not to look at her—her presence here made him. . . uneasy. . . in ways he couldn't quantify.

"You are aware of our belief that there remain spies in our midst?"

Luke assumed it was a rhetorical question, but Palpatine paused to let him answer. He glanced at Leia, then at his father, before answering on their behalf. "Yes. . .?"

"I believe I have caught them," he said simply.

The tension in Luke's chest tightened, like he had a ball of wire instead of a heart, and someone just yanked on the loose end. The wire wound its way around his ribs, his lungs; he took a deep breath, and hope it didn't seem too laboured.

Palpatine was wrong. He _had_ to be wrong. If he knew, he would have thrown them in binders by now—no. If he knew, he would have summoned Vader first to _regretfully inform him of their treachery_, and Luke's father would have been his death from the moment he stepped into the room.

_And your father cares more about you than the Empire?_

Palpatine's gaze rested solidly on Luke for a moment, so he fought to keep his warring emotions off his face, but when he moved on he sagged in relief.

Palpatine rose from his throne, and took two slow, deliberate steps down from the dais. He stood over Jade, still kneeling, and said benevolently, "Rise, my child."

She did so, head still bowed, yellow eyes—but they'd been green before, hadn't they?—to the floor. Her subservience sickened Luke, surprisingly strongly; he hadn't realised he was that. . . vehement. . . about how his master treated his servants.

The man himself was indeed smiling faintly at the girl who deferred so completely to his will—he looked almost. . . satisfied with her, in a way he never was with the Inquisitors. He was usually cruelty incarnate when he interacted with them; it had always left Luke perplexed as to why they were loyal to him in the first place.

Unless they had done something extraordinary for him. Fulfilled his plans and desires in just the way to give him the edge.

Luke's blood ran cold. Had— had Jade reported what he'd said to her to Palpatine? His suspicious behaviour? Palpatine must know they were planning a coup of sorts; had he tasked Jade with getting close to Luke, and to report back?

Was this the final straw before Palpatine finally unleashed his wrath for the betrayal on Luke. . . and the rest of his family?

His heart was beating faster, and faster, _and faster_ now, but he _forced_ himself to stay calm. Tried to breathe through his nose, even as Palpatine approached Jade more, that disgustingly kind smile still on his face. Jade's helmet was open—a sign of respect she gave her master unquestioningly, while she balked so hard at giving his father the same—and Luke could read the wary hope in the taut lines of her face. She was so. . . _devoted_ to him, so genuinely eager at the thought he might be praising her, and for just one moment she looked painfully, painfully young.

She was Luke's age, or thereabouts. A little younger. She'd never seemed particularly youthful before, through his eyes—if he could handle this stuff, so could she. But now Luke considered the fact that he still had Leia, and his father; he could still act his age in rare, fleeting moments if he wanted to.

Jade didn't have that. Inquisitors used familial terms almost mockingly, nowhere near the connection of Luke and his sister, Leia and her brother. She had never been allowed to be young.

Palpatine was directly in front of her now. His cane clacked against the floor and held still. He reached out a hand to take her chin, and she let him tilt her head up to meet his eye.

"You have always been so loyal, child," he murmured. "Haven't you?"

He threw blue fire at her.

Her scream was something unearthly, unholy. She was propelled back, hitting the floor hard, her helmet rolling away. She tried to drag herself to her feet, back to kneeling, but he electrocuted her again and her shaking arms collapsed beneath her. She whimpered.

Palpatine took up his cane again, and tapped it once. "I have to wonder," he said, "what spurred your betrayal? _Fulcrum_?" He spat the codename like a curse; Luke did his best to conceal his flinch.

She was shaking her head, almost automatically, "Master? No, master—I— I'm not—"

"I am displeased with you enough as it is, _traitor_. Do not displease me further." The barrage came again, violet and luminous in the perpetual twilight of the throne room. Jade shrieked and sobbed.

That ball of wire in his chest was prickling, dissolved, needles of metal stabbing themselves into the soft tissue of his heart and lungs. . .

Jade was innocent. She hadn't betrayed; she would _never_ betray Palpatine, not on her own. She was entirely innocent, and their master was frying her like meat, like he _didn't care_—

He clenched his fist, shifting to take a step forward, to _stop this_—

—and another hand wrapped around his wrist.

* * *

Luke's fist unclenched at her touch; she could feel the tendons shifting in his wrist. Leia didn't dare glance at him with her eyes, fixated on the Sixth Sister's torment, but she hissed mentally, _Don't_.

_Leia, he's—_

_He's onto us. If the Sixth Sister dies, that's one less acolyte of his we have to worry about, and takes the suspicion off of _us_. _

_But she's _innocent_._

_Luke, now is not the time for your petty, insane crush. _She regretted the words immediately after she said them, judging by the spike of anger they evoked, but they were necessary. _The Rebellion needs us. You can't throw it all away for her._

_But—_

_If you do, I'll pay the price right alongside you._

That shut him up.

They stood there in silence, watching the display as impassively as their father did behind him. Leia did not let go of her brother's hand.

* * *

Luke didn't know how long they stood there. It could only have been minutes at the most: by the end of it, Jade's pleas for him to believe her had long since petered out to sobs.

Palpatine finally stopped, looking down at her with disappointment. Her red hair spilled out across the floor behind her, like a deluge of blood.

"I have to say," he said to the silence, "I'm disappointed in you."

Jade didn't respond, face still contorted in a rictus of pain.

"I thought you were a better man than this, Luke."

Luke inadvertently stiffened, his brows creasing. Vader's mask shifted between them in confusion. Leia's grip on his left arm would cut off the blood supply to his hand in a moment.

"I never believed you were the sort of person to allow someone else to be so grievously punished for a crime you did yourself," his eyes cackled, "_Fulcrum_."

Jade spluttered something from the floor, woozy. Leia's grip had constricted even further. Palpatine looked highly amused.

But Luke's attention was on his father, behind him.

Vader took a breath out of sync with his respirator, the leather in his gloves creaking as he clenched his fists. Luke barely dared to turn to look at him; when he did, that terrifying death mask—the one that he'd thought was a monster when he first laid eyes on it—was fixed on him, unmoving.

Shock—then, understanding. A black, black rage was starting to build.

Luke whispered, "Father?" and watched Vader bring one of his fists up.

A shout of warning from the Force. Luke spun round and blanched at the sight of that crackling lightning, flinching back against his father and waiting for the agony—

A _snap-hiss_ and red washed through his eyelids, the blue fading to nothing in its corona. Luke took a breath, and for a moment he indulged in the thought that his father might have shielded him anyway.

But no.

When he opened his eyes again, stepping away from Vader, trying to get some distance between him and that bonfire of fury, the burgeoning hate, it was not his father who'd saved him. It was Leia.

Of course it was.

It was Leia who held her lightsaber out in front of her, free hand stretched in front of him like she would block him with her body alone. His sister, who would always choose him, just as he would always choose her.

It only made Palpatine smile more. "Of course," he said maliciously, "the Skywalker twins always come as a _set_."

_Skywalker_.

So he definitely knew, then.

"If one is a traitor. . . so is the other."

Inevitably, Luke's gaze flicked back to Vader. He didn't know why—had thought he'd shed that all-encompassing need for his approval, his guidance. But if there was one person in this room he _did not want to fight_, it was his father.

"Father," he tried again, unable to keep the desperation from his voice.

That mask still studied him. It moved slightly to Leia, her rigid stance as she glared at Palpatine, then back to Luke's open pleading.

Although Luke could not see his eyes, he felt his gaze move to the lightsaber at his hip.

What happened next happened so fast Luke could barely comprehend it. There was a tug at the lightsaber. . . and Luke, buoyed and fuelled by years of sparring lessons where he'd done _exactly this_, instantly grabbed for it, keeping it solid in his hand as he backed away. He did not light it.

It didn't matter. Leia shouted at his sudden movement, and Palpatine sought to take advantage of it, casting that awful lightning about them like a web—and Jade split Luke's attention by hissing something undoubtedly vulgar at him and Vader stretched out his hand again—

Luke had no idea what he'd been trying to do—choke him, take the lightsaber, knock him unconscious?—but he staggered back anyway, yelped as one of those bolts scorched across his skin—

And then Leia's hand was back on his arm, pulling him, _dragging him_, and they were sprinting for dear, dear life because Luke _didn't want to know what would happen to them if he stopped_—

The red guards standing outside turned their heads at the commotion. A simple twist of the dark side was enough to make them turn too far—and then they were no threat at all, just oddly bent bodies littering the corridors.

The beat of his and his sister's hearts was the only sound he could hear.

* * *

Leia didn't know when she stopped leading Luke and he stopped leading her, but she _did_ notice when his route took a very noticeable turn: downwards.

Not upwards, not towards any of the landing pads, or even to their own speeder. That was the obvious choice, so Palpatine and her father—oh _Force_, she was a fugitive from her _father_, what had they _done_—would no doubt be snapping out orders even now, locking them down, ordering the ships above planet to stop any vessel broadcasting an Imperial signal—

But it was the obvious choice for a reason: it was the _only_ choice. Where would they go, if they went down? How would they get out?

She sent her query along their bond, too conservative of breath and time to bother voicing it aloud, and Luke sent his answer along as well. It wasn't in words: it was a memory that flashed from his mind to hers, of darkness and ice on the air and children's bones and Lacert Visz's terrified face in the yellow light of a saber.

And then she understood what Luke was doing.

The shadows had always been the twins' playmates.

They'd ducked into the secret passages between hallways at one point, so they encountered minimal staff, but they _did_ encounter guards. They'd both summoned a blaster to hand and shot each one dead where they stood, reaching out with the Force. It made them a target for Palpatine and his Inquisitors and her— and Vader, but it meant it was easier for them to put distance between the target and the shooters, so it was worthwhile.

But then they plunged into the ruins of the Jedi Temple, and felt the confusing mingle of peace and death shroud them.

Like a mirage.

It wasn't until they'd scaled three crumbling walls, clambered over twenty-two debris piles and slipped on umpteen loose stones and bones that they finally stopped to rest.

Luke lit his lightsaber; neither of them had a glowrod on them. The red light cast his scared face in eerie, intimidating shadows. Leia shivered looking at him—it was such a paradox it tore her world apart.

His voice was quiet. "What do we do now?"

Leia crouched onto the floor next to him, mindful of how well sound carried in these undisturbed halls. If they'd already sent a search party down after them—and she didn't want to risk stretching out her senses and checking if they had—they didn't need to give them any help.

The two of them were already shielding as tightly as they could. Hopefully—_hopefully_—that mirage would throw enough doubt over their specific whereabouts that they could get out of here before potential search teams could get anywhere _near._

"We get out of here," she said, extrapolating on her thoughts. Luke grunted; apparently, that had not been helpful.

"Well, I'm sorry, you're not exactly Mr. Useful right now, either," she snapped. "What—what do _you _think we can do now?"

"Get out," he conceded, "and join the main bulk of the Rebellion. If not spies, we're good pilots and tacticians."

"But how do we _get there_?"

"Ahsoka."

It was so obvious. So painfully, blatantly _obvious_— "She's still on planet, isn't she? She was supposed to meet us today."

"I'll comm her," he said, reaching for his comlink. At least he had _that_ on him. "Maybe she can help us—hopefully she's got a big enough ship for it."

"She has. Didn't she say she'd be bringing someone else to this meeting as well?"

Luke didn't answer, but his lack of contradiction was answer enough. Leia watched with bated breath as he tapped Ahsoka's frequency into the comlink.

Like Sabé always did, she picked up within a minute. _"Luke. What is it?"_

"Palpatine found out about us. We need transportation off-planet."

There was a muffled curse; Leia could tell Ahsoka was trying not to say it directly into the comlink. Trying, and failing. _"I see. Are you sure?"_

"He made a show of it in front of our father and we just had to sprint for our lives through the Imperial Palace," Leia snapped, ignoring Luke's reproachful look. She was on edge, and she didn't have time for this. "_Yes_, we're sure."

Another quiet curse. _"Alright—I can get you out. Can you meet me by the Works in the Industrial sector, at these coordinates? We have a ship there we can use to get to hyperspace."_

Leia and Luke exchanged a glance, then nodded in unison. "Yes. We'll see you there as soon as possible. If we're not there by nightfall, and won't answer the comlink, assume we've been captured."

_Captured._ By her own father, in the heart of the Empire she'd spent her whole life serving.

_Because_ she'd spent her whole life serving it, she knew exactly what would happen to her if she was—what would happen to _Luke_. Her stomach roiled.

"Let's go," she said, her sudden fear giving her energy she didn't really have as she shoved herself off the wall. It was still barely light enough to see in these corridors.

Luke winced—a moment later, Leia felt it too. It was massive, monstrous, and it _hurt_, the way it rammed against their shields with the sort of icy precision he probably employed during interrogations.

Leia didn't know. She hadn't been able to stomach watching her father's interrogations for a long time; she just thought Luke's were so much more efficient.

"Ignore him," she told Luke; the conflict in her brother was as plain as day. The part of him that would always be that little orphan boy she barely remembered, wishing for a father, would do anything to please Vader, despite recent developments. She knew that he knew better, would try to adhere to his logic and newfound growth, but she also knew it was tearing him apart inside. "Come on."

He nodded grimly, and pushed himself back to his feet.

* * *

Their first objective in order to get to the Works: steal a speeder.

They'd already left the Palace far behind, so they headed for an exit. There were few speeders that actually worked in the levels as low as they travelled, so they took the risk and headed up again, relying on the hope that the Jedi Temple had disguised their presences enough that their pursuers would be caught off guard when they finally reappeared.

They'd only be caught off guard for a moment, admittedly enough, but it might be enough for them to steal a speeder from one of the lower security landing pads and make off with it. Coruscant was massive, sprawling, and _densely_ populated; if they could get far enough away and avoid any law enforcement, then even with a description and a warrant for their arrest, they could slip by into anonymity.

"Ready?" Leia murmured to Luke, squinting over the edge of the landing pad at the innocuous speeder parked there. She was highly aware of the fact that she was clinging to the edge of a Coruscanti building, with over five thousand levels between her and the surface of the planet if she fell, but sometimes it just didn't pay to think about these thing.

"Ready," he replied, just next to her. The surveillance holocams probably hadn't picked them up yet, _clinging to the edge_ as they were, so it would be what they did next that painted targets on their backs.

Luke reached out a hand and the Force, and knocked out the guards watching the pad.

The effect was instantaneous. The guards collapsed, and Leia felt two very powerful, very dark, _very angry_ presences zero in on them. Vader reached out—

—and she batted him away again. "Go, go, go!"

They swung themselves up onto the platform proper and sprinted for the speeder, more tumbling into the seat than climbing. Leia immediately reached for the controls, fumbled to get it started up—

—the doors hissed open, and white-armoured troopers poured out—

—Luke's blade snapped into life to deflect the first of the stun bolts—_stun bolts_, a part of her registered, _so they're not trying to kill us quite yet_—and Leia finally got the damn thing started—

—and they rocketed on the Coruscanti airlanes.

Leia sucked in a breath. Beside her, Luke did the same—but it was relief, not shock. He settled down into his seat and put away the saber.

"They'll have descriptions of us at the next checkpoint," he said, almost mildly.

Despite herself, she grinned, eyeing the gaps between the buildings. "Who says we're going through the checkpoints?"

She ducked between the buildings; Luke's momentary intake of breath was very gratifying, as was his grin. Steel struts loomed for them, but she weaved around them.

She wasn't even bothering to shield, anymore. She couldn't fly well enough to escape Imperial traffic patrols and search parties—_and dodge big billboards, watch out!—_without the Force, and her father would be able to pinpoint her presence to some degree anyway. Might as well blind him.

"How far to the Works?" she asked breathlessly—she wasn't tired, but she _was _exhilarated.

Luke glanced around and grimaced as he calculated, "About. . . twenty minutes? Especially"—he yelped as she swerved into an air-lane—"if you're gonna fly at these speeds."

"Of course I'm gonna fly at these speeds. Don't be boring."

He grinned. "Father would be proud of you."

His grin dropped when he realised what he'd said, and she sagely decided to never bring it up again.

She murmured, "Well, here goes everything."

* * *

They reached the Works in twenty minutes alright. The problem was, their pursuers caught up to them in ten.

"I thought"—Leia banked hard to the right, nearly tossing Luke out of the speeder—"they wanted us"—she dove down, and fire lanced above their heads—"_alive_!"

"They do."

"_Then why are they trying to kill us?!_"

Luke glanced behind him almost mournfully, then yelped and grabbed on as she took another dive. They were nearing the coordinates now.

"It might be revenge for three of them going fireball against that billboard back there," he commented.

"Great," she spat, "dutiful and jealous _and_ vengeful Imperials."

"I have faith that you can do it."

"I will shove you out of this speeder."

"But then all this effort you've gone to in order to take the fall with me would be pointless, wouldn't it?"

Despite herself, she shivered at his choice of words, glancing below her. The mishmash of levels spiralled away below her.

_Take the fall. . ._

She glanced at Luke's lightsaber, deflecting the rare bolts that did pose a risk to them. Red bolts, as red as the saber itself.

_Take the fall. . ._

No. She wouldn't think about any of this right now.

"Coming up on the coordinates," she said instead. "We can't lead them straight to Ahsoka, or we'll never get out of here. I'm gonna ditch the speeder at this walkway here, and then we'll work our way through that scaffolding on foot; the speeders can't follow."

"Leia—" Luke said, and once again she sensed it a heartbeat after he did.

Vader.

Their father was coming.

She brought the speeder to a screeching, sudden stop on the walkway and practically shoved him out. Several of their pursuers shot right past them.

"Go! Hurry!"

Without another word, he took off running. She raced to catch up.

"The coordinates are just up there," she reiterated, ducking and leaping in swing succession to avoid slamming into a metal pole. "We—"

"Wait." Luke drew his lightsaber again and sliced—almost negligently—through two of the poles he'd almost rammed into. One fell with a clatter, before it plunged into the depths of Coruscant; the other. . .

There was a creaking sound from the scaffolding above them. Luke extinguished his lightsaber.

"Let's go," he said.

They cleared the scaffolding just as it collapsed behind them. The return path was impassable.

"Good thinking," she said.

"I _am_ capable of it from time to time."

She pointed. "There."

He squinted for a moment, before he saw what she had seen: a figure crouched on the building opposite to them, tall, with a Togruta's silhouette.

"Ahsoka."

"We need to—"

A cold rushed through them. Luke whimpered. If the situation was any less dire, Leia would have mocked him for it.

Instead, she glanced behind them. She couldn't see anything—Luke's makeshift blockage still held—but the hum of a lightsaber through metal echoed.

"We need to go," she tried again. "We need to get across to that building. There's a bunch of struts; if we use them as stepping stones, we can—"

"No." Luke shook his head, sickeningly pale. "If we jump simultaneously, individually, it'll take too long. Trust me. We need to work together."

For a moment, Leia wondered why he knew so much about jumping through the airlanes of Coruscant, then decided there were more pertinent things to worry about. "And _how_ do you propose we do _that_?"

"I'll throw you with the Force," he said simply, "and then you throw me."

She stood frozen for precious seconds. The lightsaber—_her father_—was getting closer.

"Come on, we've done this before."

"Fine, then. I'll throw you first."

"No—I'm the better thrower, you're the better catcher, remember? This is the best chance we've got." He glanced behind them, then cast his gaze back to Leia, eyes pleading. "Please—we're running out of time."

She took a deep breath. . . then nodded. "Alright."

She eyed the edge of the walkway, the jump she'd have to make, and took a few steps back.

"On three."

She crouched a little, readied herself.

"One—"

Her heart was hammering in her chest; tremors were running through the Force, playing through her body like vibrations on a viol's string.

"—two—"

She fixed her mind on Luke, ready for that push. Luke: steady, solid, dependable Luke, who she knew would see her to the other side safely—

"—_three_!"

She jumped.

There was a moment of terror, where she slowed in midair and crested the height of her arc and thought _this is it, this is how I die—_

And then the Force barrelled into her, knocking the air from her lungs and _flinging _her to the other side of that chasm. Ahsoka was there, running towards her; she hit the ground rolling, back on her feet in a heartbeat, already shaking off the bruises.

Because time was of the essence, here.

She turned, ignorant of Ahsoka running at her.

_On three_, she said mentally. _One, two, _three_—_

He jumped. She pulled.

He shot forward. Like a blaster bolt, like a starfighter, like a fist. A relieved smile broke across her face—

And then he was yanked upwards, and stopped.

Just. . . stopped.

He stared at her in shock—and mounting terror.

She pulled, and pulled, and _pulled_, but it did nothing.

He hovered in midair for a moment, clutching at his throat.

Slowly, dreadfully, _desperately_, Leia slid her eyes back to the walkway they'd jumped from.

Sure enough, her father stood there, the wreckage of her brother's blockage in red hot pieces behind him.

He stood like some dark knight amid the winds and chaos and descending dusk of Coruscant, a solid, unmovable shadow against its constantly shifting chiaroscuro. She couldn't tell where his mask was pointing—whether it was at Luke, or her, or even Ahsoka, still racing for her.

But Leia could see his hand.

It was held out in front of him, thumb and forefinger pinched together. And Luke, still hanging in limbo, struggled to breathe.


	25. Shatterpoint Five

He gasped. And gasped and gasped and gasped, the air barely scraping past his throat. He could still breathe, though it took the effort of heaving his lungs and shoulders to _force_ that precious air through; his father didn't want to kill him yet. His hands automatically scrabbled for his neck, as if flesh and bone could shatter the metaphysical grip on it.

It _hurt_.

He—

He'd—

In all the times he'd seen this happen in front of him—all of the whimpering, the sobbing, Jade's stoic snarl—he'd never considered that it might _hurt_. It was just. . . not breathing.

But it _did_. His trachea warped and caved under the pressure, muscles spasming as they were wrenched out of usual alignment—tears _burned_—

Somewhere, somehow, he heard Leia's shout of horror past the whistling in his ears.

His father brought his hand down, sharply, and Luke was brought back down with it, hard. He barely remembered to roll when he landed. His knees screamed.

The metal walkway clanged with the collision. It shuddered a little, the mess of smoking struts Vader had left the scaffolding as clattering away, some tumbling into the abyss of Coruscant.

But the grip on his throat vanished.

Luke sobbed as he finally dragged in air. He gasped with it. His legs were shaking, his arms were shaking; if Vader had decided to run him through there and then, he couldn't have done anything. Leia's shouts still carried on the winds, quieted to a tense murmuring of dread, and he barely dared to look up at that death mask. He was helpless.

But Vader didn't exploit it.

His hand had relaxed from its claw-like grip, but now it hovered unnervingly close to his lightsaber. He didn't come forward—just watched, still as the monolith he resembled, like a gargoyle among the shadows of the starscrapers.

Luke wasn't sure if the fleeting whisper of regret he felt from him was real or imagined—he tried to follow it up, read his father, but to no avail. All he felt was a steely resolve, forced impassiveness, and—

He swallowed.

And _anger_. Hotter than Tatooine's binary suns but colder than death itself, bubbling and boiling and _burning_ inside that black armour, higher and higher and higher with every breath Luke gasped for.

He coughed and tried, "Father."

Vader tensed at the address. Luke didn't know himself what he was trying to do—beg, plea for mercy, explain himself? No mercy would be forthcoming, not from the Emperor's executioner, and he did not have the _time_ to explain himself. This had been such a journey of thorns, right from the moment his father had sat them down and talked about a slave chip in a suit of armour, and he could not articulate all that he'd learned, all that he'd decided, while they stood here in the winds and the skeleton of Coruscant.

He didn't know what to say.

Every lesson in diplomacy he'd ever had told him therefore to say nothing at all.

Luke had never been great at diplomacy.

"_Father_," he begged, dragging himself onto feet that trembled just as surely as his voice did and holding out his hand, "come with us."

His eyes widened as he realised what he'd said—Vader actually took a step back in shock—but _yes_. _Yes._ That was _exactly it_.

_And your father cares more about you than the Empire?_

_Yes. He does._

"Come with us," he repeated, something dangerously close to hope lighting in his chest. His hand began to tremble as well. "Palpatine doesn't care about you—he planted a transmitter in your suit—come with us, and we can take him down. We've got the preparations for the coup, we can pair with the Rebellion, with Mother, and—"

"_Mother_?" Vader's voice was low. Deadly.

Luke kept talking anyway. "Yes—Leia was right, Amidala _is_ Padmé Amidala, she's our mother, we can go to her, be a family again—" He took a shuddering breath. "But I _can't stay_, Father. Neither of us can. We have problems with the Empire, problems Leia says she couldn't fix even as Empress—and I believe her. But if we can tear down the Empire and start anew, we _can_ fix them. Come on, Father," he said again, and again, and again, "_come with us_. You can do so much _good_—"

"And I do not already?" There was something. . . odd. . . in the words, flat as they were. Something like heartbreak, or disbelief, or betrayal—or even all three at once.

"Father," Luke shook his head, "you are the Emperor's executioner."

Vader physically recoiled at the words, just as vehemently as Luke had recoiled upon hearing them from the Velts. More and more shields went up, locking away his father's mind like the castle on Mustafar, no matter how desperately Luke pawed along their bond.

"You believe that."

He didn't hide the tears on his face as he nodded. "I do."

"Then you are not the dutiful son I know."

"_Dutiful_?" For some reason that fired Luke's temper as well, for all that he knew that shouting would only make things worse. "I was _desperate_. I wanted your approval more than anything, and you _let_ me hero worship you like that, even knowing exactly what you do, exactly what you _did do_ to my aunt and uncle! I love you, Father"—Vader jerked; whether it was at the impassioned admission or the fresh flood of tears on Luke's face, he didn't know—"but I am a far better person when I'm trying to be _myself_, who _I_ am, and not some idealised version of you!"

Vader was silent for a moment. The wind caught his cape and waved it around him.

"So this is who you believe you really are," he said dispassionately. He eyed Luke's outstretched hand. "A _Rebel_?"

"_Yes_, Father. Me and Leia both." He offered his hand further, not missing how his father seemed to shrink away from it. He was gripping his lightsaber like a lifeline, now. "This is who we want to be.

"So _please_, Father." His voice broke. "Come with us."

Vader's helmet tilted from his face, to his hand. He twitched forward, almost instinctively, then drew back again with a flash of self-hatred. The moment stretched for an eternity. . .

. . .and then an eternity came to an end.

Vader let out something akin to a roar and lit his saber, bringing it up in a flash so fast Luke could barely blink. He stumbled back, but not fast enough; he collapsed to his knees with a cry; he shoved his eyes shut against the _agony_ that ripped up his arm—

His proffered hand, severed at the wrist, fell to the floor with a _thud_.

Shock and terror froze his mind. All Luke could do was stare at the red stump which used to be a working, coordinated hand, scarred and tanned and blemished in irregular places that told of a life adventurously lived. The red-tinged light of the setting sun. The red, angry lightsaber blade as it deactivated and was returned to his father's side.

He said icily, "I will not have a Rebel son."

And, somewhere behind him, Leia screamed to the winds.

* * *

Ahsoka's arms were strong and unyielding and bleeding, blood seeping out of ragged tears made by human nails, desperate swipes. Leia knew it must hurt; she also knew she didn't care.

_"Luke!"_

Ahsoka's arms tightened around her torso, lashed her arms to her side, and still she kicked and screamed.

"_Luke! _Let him go you— you _bastard_, _let him go_! _Luke!_"

Distantly, the falling darkness shrouding everything in shadow, she could see Luke stare blankly at his lost hand, like he couldn't quite believe it. She'd _hoped_—for one precious, crystalline second, she'd _hoped_—and now—

_Luke_—

"You—!" she sobbed, quieter now, too quiet for the object of her rage to hear her. "You _bastard_."

Vader said something. Luke's face crumpled; Leia felt the rejection, the heartbreak, crash across to her like a planet shifting out of alignment, and she screamed again.

"Leia," Ahsoka said, quiet in her ear, "we need to go."

"No!" She scrabbled at Ahsoka's grip again, but her arms were pinned and she couldn't get a decent angle. "_Luke_—"

Vader reached out a hand, a shadow in the night, and pressed it like a leech against Luke's stunned forehead. Her brother slumped to the ground.

He bent over him. For a moment, Leia thought he was going to kneel down, hoist him into his arms like when they were injured and got a bad scrape while play-duelling. They'd jokingly kicked and protested that they were too old to be carried like this, the injury wasn't bad, they could walk, but he'd never put them down.

The thought stilled Leia enough that she was aware of the silent tears on her cheeks. The wind chilled them.

But that was not what Vader did. He just turned, gestured sharply to the white figures she could see starting to emerge from the walkway, blasters aloft. He dragged Luke up by the scruff of his collar and practically tossed his unconscious body at them; two troopers dragged him between them none-too-gently, his head bouncing awkwardly against his chest with every step.

Then Vader turned, the wind catching at his cape, and pointed a steely finger out into the chasm—towards Leia.

The stormtroopers turned their heads.

One raised a comlink to speak into it—

"_Leia_," Ahsoka said again, _"we need to go."_

"What about Luke?" she hissed back.

"We can and will rescue him later. We _will_. But we can't do anything for him now."

"We can _fight_—"

"There are entire platoons of stormtroopers coming after the both of us right now, Leia. We are two Force users against Vader, all his troops, and the risk of Luke getting caught in the crossfire. _We would die_."

"But _what will happen to Luke_? Vader— Vader will—"

"Luke said Vader cares more about you than the Empire, right?"

"He just _cut off his hand_—"

"Making decisions in anger is one thing. Later on, once he's calmed down, I'm sure he'll get his priorities straight." Ahsoka wasn't even arguing as passionately as before, more worn out to a bone-deep tiredness Leia recognised from veterans of the 501st. She just backed away from the edge of the platform, towards the walkway to the ship.

She didn't even seem to believe what she was saying.

But she was right about one thing, at least: there was nothing they could do.

Leia slumped, all the fight leaving her. Luke had disappeared from sight, back into the maze of starscrapers; only her father remained, watching her with the mask's flat, insect-like eyes.

"Luke," she whispered.

But Luke was gone.

She took a deep breath. "Okay. You can put me down now."

Ahsoka hesitated, clearly sceptical, but released her, almost idly moving to rub the deep scratches along her arm. Leia didn't apologise.

"Alright." Ahsoka tilted her head. "The ship's this way. And—" She grimaced. "For what it's worth, there _is_ someone who wanted to meet you. Both of you. But. . ."

"One will have to do," she said dispassionately.

"Yes." Ahsoka laid a hand on her shoulder and gently pushed her forward. "One will have to do."

They walked for only a short time before they reached the coordinates they'd been given, though it was risky enough as it was. Vader knew where they were, and was hunting Leia as fiercely as he was Luke. It wouldn't be long until the stormtroopers came with speeders and ships, and managed to catch up to them.

But they reached the hiding place of Ahsoka's ship soon enough. "Well," Ahsoka admitted before they even arrived, "it's not really _my _ship."

Leia didn't even have the energy to muster up surprise at seeing the _Hidden Star_'s familiar shape in the dusk gloom.

The landing ramp descended before they even approached, warm yellow light spilling out. A figure—presumably the pilot, though Leia would have thought Ahsoka could fly herself—stood waiting for them.

Again, Leia didn't have the energy to be surprised at Biggs Darklighter's face. Even as he gaped at her, glancing at Ahsoka only as a courtesy.

"I've run the pre-flight checks and we're ready to take off," he said to her, eyes sliding back to Leia every other word like some compass pointing north.

"Good," Ahsoka said, "then we'll do that as quickly as possible. We need to get off Coruscant before Vader can get a blockade in place. Leia," she turned her gaze to her, "go and head into your old cabin—Biggs and I moved all our stuff to the spare one when we heard you needed an escape route. We thought. . ."

_We thought Luke would be with you as well._

Leia nodded, unsmiling. "Alright." She wasn't of any further use here.

Ahsoka made for the cockpit, but Biggs—_Biggs_, the boy from Tatooine she could _actually remember_ _now_—lingered for a moment. He looked conflicted.

"Biggs Darklighter," she said.

"Leia Skywalker," he threw back, a little accusatorily. "I—"

She turned her back and walked into her cabin.

She had no belongings to unpack, nothing to ingratiate herself in with. She just dumped herself onto the well-made bed and tried not to cry.

The ship hummed underneath her as it took off and shot into the sky. Distantly, she could hear planetary security's warnings about sticking to the approved airlanes blare out of the cockpit, until Ahsoka shut off the comm and focused on getting them out of there as fast as possible. She felt the ship rock when it took its first barrage of fire from a pursuing TIE fighter, then after that the rest of the shots were white noise, drowned out by the wailing of the Force.

_Leia._

Her father was calling to her, alternating between desperate, heartfelt pleas for her to return and threats for what would happen to her—to _Luke_—if she didn't. She shut him out, didn't respond, sure he could feel her rage over what he'd done to Luke loud and clear.

Instead, she reached for Luke. He was still unconscious, the bond dimmed in a way that was more unnatural than sleep but not as definitive as death. It did not help her rising panic.

_Luke_, she called, trying to prod him awake. No reply; Vader had him too far under. _Luke. . ._

No answer.

She screamed.

Her throat was raw, but she screamed some more, and some more, until it was hoarse and she couldn't dredge up enough air to continue. She grappled with a pillow, pressed it to her face and screamed silently, airlessly. Hot tears soaked the fabric and her face.

"Luke," she whimpered. "_Luke_."

Nothing. Not a flicker of response.

Luke stayed unconscious for the entire dogfight and escape, until long after they'd jumped to hyperspace and their bond stretched to nothingness. Only then did Leia finally emerge from her cabin, uncaring of the tears still staining her eyes, and sat in the back seats in the cockpit to watch the streaked star warp and shimmer.

Biggs turned to her, no doubt to say something inane, but one look at her dissuaded him. He and Ahsoka left the cockpit.

Leia brought her knees up to her chest and kept watching the stars, watching the hole in her chest grow larger and emptier with every parsec they travelled.

Another tear escaped her eye.

She was so, so cold.

**.**

**End of Part I**

**.**

* * *

**Okay, so that's all for the first part of this fic and that's all that I've written out so far. I'm going to stop updating for a while now while I start working on Part II (which ought to be the last part, but we'll see how it goes and how long it gets). **

**I'm not sure how long this break will be, but it'll definitely be over a month, if not several. There are still some other fics I want to turn my attention to writing, I'll have a lot of research to do to do the fic justice, and I think the time I'll have to write will severely decrease as well. But I _will _ finish the fic, I have too much exciting stuff planned not to, and despite what the last few chapters might imply it _will _have a happy ending, for all of the main characters. It'll be a long, difficult road for them to get there, but they _will_ get there. I'm not going to make this a tragedy.**

**In the meantime, thanks for reading, and it'll be back in a few months!**


	26. Fifth Shadow

**I'm back!**

**Thank you to everyone for being patient! I hope to continue the previous updating schedule of one chapter every Sunday, real life permitting.**

**And for the warnings from now on: from here on out, this fic will contain torture and its effects, manipulation, gaslighting, abuse... If any of these pose a problem, I ask you to look after yourself and not read it; likewise, I'm trying to depict them all as accurately and sensitively as I can, so if you have any ideas on how to improve it then please let me know. The same with if you think any other warnings need to be included that I've missed out; I'll be happy to add them.**

**Thank you all for reading so far, and I hope you continue to enjoy it!**

* * *

**.**

**Part II: Justice**

**.**

The stump of his hand was a bright spark of pain. It dragged him out of the blissful peace of unconsciousness into the fraught horror that was his reality, and he groaned the moment it felt like his vocal cords wouldn't shred themselves to pieces if they so much as trembled.

He felt like shavit.

There was a sharp clip on the back of his head. Agony both pounded in his skull and lanced down his spine. "Quiet!"

Despite the trooper's order, the man's actions. . . were not conducive to his aim. The pain of it all just made Luke groan again.

That time he got a fist to the face and he reared back, what little white vision he'd had flushing to red. Once he'd finally blinked all the blood out of his eyes and squinted against the artificial lights of the city-planet, the Imperial Palace loomed on the horizon and the first hints of dawn were just starting to touch the sky.

That wasn't what held his gaze, though.

His father stood at the front of the speeder, not quite in the pilot's seat but towering over the trooper who was. Luke idly wondered why he hadn't deigned to fly himself, as he always loved to do, then he flicked his gaze up to meet his. Even with the red eye plates in the way, he could tell his father was glaring.

He felt colder than the depths of hyperspace.

"F—" He opened his mouth to say, and got a blaster butt to the gut for his troubles. He doubled over, wheezing past an already-ruined throat, and saw stars for a good few minutes.

The Force lurked at the back of his head, but he couldn't touch it through the daze. It could only touch him, and the metaphysical shackles his father cinched around him lay heavier than the binders at his wrists. At least he could _undo_ those.

They were nearing the palace now. Setting down on one of the royal landing pads. Luke knew it intrinsically.

And, he had to admit, he was afraid.

_Father?_ he probed, though he couldn't tell if Vader was ignoring him or if it had even _gone through_, the Force being as unresponsive as it was. _Father, you have to let me explain—_

_I will accept no explanations_.

The words thundered. They bulldozed his fragile calm and stampeded like a herd of banthas. He had to wince.

_Father—_

_If you are so desperate to explain yourself, I am sure the Emperor will listen to your mewling._

Luke scoffed. _Mewling_?

He knew it was a bad idea the moment it came to mind, but he had to jab back— _So you're deferring back to your slaver, now?_

_SILENCE!_

Yep. It was a bad idea.

His vision actually _whited out_ from the mental assault; tears instinctively spilled from his eyes to track through the grime and blood on his face. He sensed no flicker of regret or sympathy from him.

Luke tried to think of one last parting shot, but they'd set down now and suddenly there were hands behind him, twisting his arms uncomfortably. He staggered out of the speeder under the force of them.

His legs were trembling. He would've fallen over were it not for the troopers gripping him tightly.

He did when his father executed them all with a wave of his hand.

He hit the duracrete hard and grimaced when he tasted blood, but the most distasteful of all was the sound of the snapping necks—and the sound of bodies hitting the duracrete around them.

He spat blood. "Was that _necessary_?"

"I am not required to explain myself to traitors and Rebel scum."

Luke swallowed and scoffed. "Uh huh. So what, are you trying to keep this a _secret_ or something?" he asked. He hoped it wasn't because they—despite his new _Rebel scum_ status—had abused him. He had enough blood on his conscience.

The subtle twitch in his father's shoulders betrayed him and Luke scoffed again. "Hundreds of troopers went searching for me and Leia, you can't just—"

A metaphysical grip around his throat and suddenly his legs were kicking in the air—_only a few metres above the ground, not thousands of levels, a few metres, not thousands of levels_—

Then there was duracrete underfoot again and he staggered, coughing.

A steel hand clamped onto his shoulder. "_Get up and move_," his father growled.

Luke scowled at him.

Then his gaze flicked down, and he realised—his lightsaber was on his father's belt.

His gaze flicked back up and he lunged.

Vader took a split-second to act, and that split-second would've been all he needed to rearm himself, to fight _back_, to flee and get away and rejoin Leia—

But he lunged for it with his sword arm.

And he had no hand to grab it with.

A leather grip around his neck then thrown back—Luke staggered, staring at the stump of his own wrist. It was numb in that it was so painful his brain had chosen to stop feeling it. It was so detached from any of his reality that it just. . . wouldn't compute.

He'd. . . almost forgotten about that. How had he—

"Don't test me, _boy_," Vader snarled.

Luke snapped his eyes up and _glared_. "You cut off my hand."

"I told you," his father growled back, "that _I will not have a Rebel son_."

He gripped the collar of Luke's shirt and dragged him into the turbolift on the edge of the landing pad. Luke didn't bother resisting.

He just said, quietly, "Then you will have a dead one."

The turbolift doors hissed shut.

* * *

Luke had been in the throne room a mere few hours before. It was largely unchanged: shadows still hung on the air like drapes; Palpatine still sat in his throne like a pale, wrinkled pile of rags; even Mara Jade still knelt at the foot of the throne, her visor open and yellowish eyes fixed on Luke with the fury of an injured nexu.

She was favouring her right leg to stand on, he noted.

Force lightning was not exactly _gentle_, even when not intended to kill.

Vader dragged him right forward, to just below the shallow steps up to the dais, and chucked him to the ground. He himself knelt stately, off to the side, the stiffness to the motion as much a product of his mechanical limbs as reluctance or loathing, but Luke was left _sprawling_, knees to the cold, hard floor, head bowed and shuddering.

The moment it stopped ringing, he made to lift it, to snarl some defiant words before Palpatine voiced whatever chilling monologue he was concocting. . . but there was the freezing touch of the Force against his crown, forcing him to stay down.

Most galling of all, he couldn't tell if it was Palpatine, his father, or even Mara.

It wasn't like he was among friends, here.

He heard the rustle of cloth and the rhythmic _tap-tap-tap_ of the cane that meant Palpatine had risen, was approaching him. He heard Mara shuffle back, but Luke just focused on his breathing as the temperature plummeted further, ice crystals forming on the air—soothing and scorching his throat simultaneously.

The footsteps stopped at the top of the steps, the crack of the cane against the floor intentionally loud; he flinched unwittingly. He sensed no glee through the Force, but knew that Palpatine was feeling it nonetheless.

Palpatine sighed, long, loud and gentle.

"Child," he said, almost reverently, "you and your sister ran before we could discuss this like civilised people, so I shall ask you now: why did you decide to betray everything you swore your life to?"

Luke gritted his head and tried to raise his head, to look him in the eye, to do _anything_ that wasn't kneel here trembling and broken. The force on his neck vanished suddenly and his head snapped back painfully; he gasped out a whimper before he managed to bite his tongue.

Palpatine laughed.

Hatred kindled in the pit of his stomach. Luke _glared_ up into those sickly yellow eyes and snapped, "Because you are _evil_."

Palpatine laughed again, the sound uglier and uglier with every passing moment. "My dear boy," he said, "haven't you learnt this lesson already? Evil is a point of view."

"It is." He lifted his chin. "And my point of view changed— _agh_!"

Quick as a whip, lightning blasted him back and Luke stared at the stars in his visions. They faded, only to be replaced by the diamonds in the ceiling—the stars of all the galaxy.

The galaxy he'd sworn to protect, and help, and cherish.

He'd only changed his mind about _how_.

The crack of cane against the floor was an explicit threat, this time.

"You grew a spine, boy. It inconveniences me."

He didn't flicker his gaze—not from the stars in his sky. He wondered which one Leia was flying towards now.

"But I'm sure the situation can still be salvaged," Palpatine continued smoothly. "You are young, and foolish. I am certain that this flight of fancy will pass—you'll return to sense and to us soon—but you do understand that until then you have to face the consequences of your actions, yes?"

Luke didn't bother responding to the first part—he couldn't think of something to say that would get him taken seriously. So he just said, "Of course, Palpatine."

His lack of respect earned him another brief electrocution. The stump of his wrist banged against the floor this time; he screamed until his vocal cords were raw.

His father stood there and did nothing.

"Good," Palpatine said pleasantly. "Take him to a cell. Treat his wrist, but don't replace his hand yet. I will set to work on him in the morning."

A red guard approached. Luke glared up at them, limbs still twitching and trembling and too weak to stand on, and didn't even resist when they drove the point of their Force pike into his back.

Agony eclipsed consciousness.

* * *

The hyperspace journey they'd plotted took eight days. Leia didn't emerge from the cabin for three of them.

On the fourth day, she waited until Biggs was asleep and Ahsoka was on the watch, then slipped into the cockpit. She didn't say anything; just sat there and watched the stars wheel by in a silence as dead and hollow as the hole in her chest.

Tears leaked from her eyes intermittently. She didn't move to wipe them away.

Ahsoka said nothing to her, either—the bleakness in the Force was enough to warn her away—but when the watch changed and Biggs came to sit in her seat, he couldn't weather the atmosphere for more than fifteen minutes.

"You're really Leia Skywalker?" he asked. It seemed like a bit of an inane question. She just glowered and nodded in response. "Do— do you remember me?"

She tucked her hands in her lap. "As of recently."

"What does _that_ mean?"

No reply.

He sighed. Ran a hand through his black hair—shaggier now, she noted, than when she'd seen him on Tatooine. Than when he'd been attending Skystrike.

"Did you remember me on Tatooine?" he asked quietly.

She shook her head.

"Why—"

"It's a long story," she said, and her throat seized up. "I don't know the whole of it. I'd need— my brother would tell—"

She swallowed.

Looked away.

She did not say anything more to anyone until they landed.

* * *

The base was on Dantooine. Huh.

Leia didn't have the energy within her to be surprised, or to fake surprise, or. . . do anything with that knowledge, really.

She left the cockpit as they landed, though she knew that nobody would have minded her presence; if Biggs could fly well enough to get into Skystrike, he could fly well enough to deal with a morose passenger. But. . .

She didn't want to look out the viewport as they descended. Didn't want to risk someone looking _in_, spotting her, taking note.

Her face had not been advertised in the Empire. It wasn't anywhere near as notorious as her father's or the Emperor's visage. Only people in the upper echelons of the Imperial Court, or people she and Luke had dealt with on missions, would recognise her.

She. . . wanted to hang onto that anonymity a little longer. She got the feeling that if she vanished off the face of the galaxy, she wouldn't particular mind that either.

She already felt like she'd left half her soul behind—

—because she _had_—

—so what was the other half worth to her now?

Ahsoka emerged from the cockpit to clap her on the shoulder—gently, in a reassuring way. Leia didn't shrug it off; she didn't have the energy for that, either.

"Come on," she said, then paused.

"Padmé is waiting for us."

Leia wordlessly let her lead her down the ramp.

The hangar was deserted, save for a few droids trundling about, and she was glad of it. It was a small hangar, after all, clearly intended for personal use by some of the Rebellion's leaders. But when they ducked out of it, into the corridors of a building that. . . struck her as nothing more than an abandoned _hospital_, to be quite honest, people started to mill about. Rush past.

A few paused to greet Ahsoka in very respectful tones, not casting Leia or Biggs a second glance. They were the pilots, or the spies, or the other invisible workers; they were not worth a glance the way the coordinator for all Rebel intelligence was.

Luke would have bristled. Leia would have smiled, if not for his absence.

It was the third person to greet Ahsoka that made her heart start to pound.

The woman's hair was dyed blonde for the moment, her smile broad and genuine when she looked at Ahsoka—a far cry from the guarded brunette Leia had met on Naboo—but she recognised her anyway.

Her presence was too familiar by now, shields or no shields.

Sabé's gaze slid past Ahsoka to rest on Leia. Her wide, genuine smile didn't fade in the slightest, though there was a touch of melancholy to it as well.

"Hello, Leia," she said. "She's waiting for you."

Leia, who did not need to guess who _she_ was, swallowed.

The rest of the walk was made in tense silence. Leia bit her lip as they went but didn't dare break it.

It was a short walk. They soon arrived at a door—almost identical to all the others they'd passed—which even Ahsoka paused at. She stepped forward and rapped six times. _Rattatat. Rattatat. _

Leia wondered what that was code for. She decided she didn't care.

"Come in," said a voice. A woman's voice, light and smooth but taut with tension. It was a familiar voice—not just from the hundreds of recordings Leia had watched, but from something deeper, earlier, a memory she couldn't access even without the mind block—and Leia imagined a familiar gesture in the clenching of her hands around her datapad, the tightening of her lips, the way her eyelids fluttered when she took a deep breath.

She was projecting, of course. She didn't know nearly enough about her mother to think she could guess her mannerisms, but Luke clenched his hands like that; Leia pinched her lips like that; they both sighed like that. She wanted at least some part of them to have come from the greatest champion of democracy in modern galactic history—not just from the father who was the monster under everyone's beds.

A shadow in the night, wind catching at the cloak so it flickered like a hologram, Luke jerked upright like a puppet—

Her thoughts whirled a parsec a minute.

But eventually she straightened up, reached to press the button to open the door, then stepped through.

And froze.

The office didn't seem relatively large, but from what Leia had seen of the cramped base it probably _was_. It was. . . _littered_ with datapads, supplies, cabinets, maps and charts, but they were orderly. Each put in the right place on a desk or chair or file, they were just. . . everywhere.

The logistics of even running _this_ base made Leia's head hurt to think about. She didn't want to consider what her— what Amidala was dealing with in order to run the entire Rebellion.

Her gaze was riveted to one map in particular. It looked vaguely familiar, a little like the famous swirl their galaxy formed, but it was clearly. . . different. Massive chunks were missing, or shaded out, with one strange, winding route looping around some of the planets like a ball of string a tooka had been playing with. She narrowed her eyes—

"Leia?"

Right.

She. . . was doing something.

She looked to the woman seated in the centre of the office. No—not seated anymore; she'd risen to her feet while Leia avoided taking her in, and was now hovering uncertainly, ready to approach but unwilling to overstep any boundaries. . .

Leia looked her in the eye.

She was short.

Leia shook herself mentally. She'd known that. She'd known that Padmé Amidala Naberrie was only slightly taller than Leia herself, that Vader was a _behemoth_ and that she and Luke had to have received their short stature from _someone_. But. . .

Padmé was short, for such a powerful, charismatic leader of the Rebellion.

She didn't know why she was so hung up on this.

But she looked longer, and harder, and saw all the same superficial similarities Luke had pointed out to her so many months ago. Leia's hair; Luke's nose; their height. . . It went on and on and Leia found it _unnerving_ that a woman she'd never met—well, not that _she remembered_—could be so, so similar to her.

_You two look more alike than we do,_ Luke had said.

She added to it in her mind, words she'd heard him say a hundred times but never heard him say to this, when she needed it the most: _I told you so._

She wished she didn't have to imagine it, but her brother wasn't there. And. . . _she_ was.

She hadn't been there before.

She'd chosen not to be there.

How dare she be there now?

Padmé's eyes were full of tears when she stopped, about a step away from Leia, and held out her hand.

No hugs. Either she didn't want to frighten Leia, like a skittish animal who'd bolt at the first sign of the unknown, or she didn't think she deserved it.

It was _exactly_ what Luke or Leia would have done.

And Leia didn't know how true that last part was—didn't know whether she was more _angry_ or _relieved_ or _betrayed_ at seeing her lost mother again—but she did know one thing: _she was not a skittish animal._

She would not be treated as one.

So she threw herself the last step and wrapped her arms around her mother's torso.

_Everyone _had tensed, but she just buried her face in her shoulder and—

And sobbed.

She. . . couldn't remember the last time an adult—a parental figure, one of warm, gentle flesh and bone rather than a man of unyielding durasteel who she'd _loved_, but who wasn't big on affection—had hugged her. Aunt Beru? Uncle Owen?

Padmé's arms were solid and tight and _real_ around her and didn't expect Leia to be strong, for once.

She cried.

"Luke," she whispered through a suddenly clogged throat, because the trip through hyperspace had not left her dry and she still had infinite grief to be shared if there was only someone willing to share it.

The arms tightened around her; the hands started rubbing circles on her back. Leia realised that Ahsoka, Sabé and Biggs weren't at the door anymore—they were gone, off to witness something that wasn't as damningly private as this.

"I know," Padmé whispered back. Her voice cracked. "We'll get him back, Leia, I promise."

"Where were you?"

The question tumbled out before Leia could stop herself. Padmé tensed, but Leia didn't wait for an answer as another wail tore from her throat and she just buried her face further into her shoulder.

Padmé's motions turned rocking—cradling. "We'll get him back," she repeated. "Put together a team—"

"I want to be on it."

"And I suspect you'll have to be; we need your inside knowledge. But tomorrow." Padmé drew back slightly, holding Leia just inside arm's length so their eyes—identical shades of brown—could meet. She kept rubbing soothing circles on her arm. "You need to go to a room and rest. You're exhausted."

Leia shook her head. "Luke's in danger—"

"And you will be too if you go haring off after him without pause for planning and recuperation. Go and sleep, Leia. I will start organising it while you do." A gentle hand—once soft, now callused from two decades of rebellion—brushed her cheek. "Leia. . . you're not responsible for every problem in the galaxy, and you're not alone. We can cover for you when you can't do it yourself."

Leia whispered, in a defeated sort of way, "That was what Luke used to do."

* * *

His anger hadn't abated.

His anger never abated. That was the point. He was Sith, and he was good at it; anger was his closest companion, the only thing he could rely on to always serve him, always _be on his side_, even when every person he knew of betrayed him.

Including his children.

Vader stood at the viewport to the _Executor_, peering down at the jewel-like city-planet below him. Luke was someone down there, no doubt getting. . . his just desserts for his treason, while Leia was somewhere in the stars he saw beyond the planet, dimmer and dimmer with every parsec.

His anger had cooled towards them enough that he could think more clearly—enough to wonder why they'd betrayed him, what they'd seen in a band of terrorists that Leia could not bring to an empire she would head, what it was that Luke had been so desperate to explain to him, before he'd shut him out and their time was up. . .

But Vader had also spent eighteen years wondering why Padmé had truly been on Mustafar—to save or to slaughter him?—and he knew all too well the perils of pointless thought.

Palpatine would get through to Luke. He— he wouldn't hurt him too badly, not unless necessary; he didn't want to risk driving him further away, surely?

Surely?

So. . .

Vader glanced down at the datapad in his hand. His orders were stark and clear across the screen: retrace the twins' recent steps across the galaxy, and inspect any of the Imperial facilities they'd visited in the last year. They had no idea how new their treason was, but they were fairly sure it hadn't existed upon the unfortunate incident with the Velts.

It was a standard thing to do; Luke and Leia had done much the same thing themselves, multiple times. But Vader balked at having to do it now.

Palpatine was sending him away.

_Good_.

Good that he would be sent away, that he would not have to deal with Luke's petty pleas and resistance before his stubbornness gave way to sense and he rejoined them. Good that he would be able to return to a loyal son again, who would help him find his daughter and restore order to their family.

So Vader gave the order to jump to Kuat, and only felt the slightest tinge of regret when Luke's Force presence vanished behind them.


	27. Family Names

**I should reiterate once more that while there isn't any graphic or detailed description of torture, this chapter does contain it, so please avoid if that's not your thing.**

* * *

When Luke woke up, he was confused for. . . multiple reasons. They all had the indecency to manifest at once, while he was still hovering between rest and wakefulness, and he felt dizzy when he finally opened his eyes.

He was in a cell.

He knew that, because he remembered Palpatine's last orders, and Palpatine's orders were always obeyed on Coruscant. But this wasn't a detention cell he recognised. Most of them were fairly standard, completely identical whether they be on a planet, on the _Devastator_ or on the _Executor_. But this. . .

Well, it wasn't white, for one thing.

And he didn't ache, for another.

In fact, he was. . . not _painless_, per se, but numb. Nothing hurt, but he didn't feel quite _there_ as he stretched his arms and wondered at how. . . unfamiliar. . . they felt.

_Luke?_

He whipped his head around. That had sounded like. . .

. . .sands, bright and burning, a cold hard hand clamped around his wrist and the hiss of a lightsaber; _I won't let you take them, Darth, they're no children of yours_. . .

. . .a memory half-dead.

_Luke, you have to be ready._

_He's coming for you._

Who. . .?

Luke didn't even finish the thought before the door swung open and Palpatine waltzed in, a kind smile on his face and a sick glint in his eyes.

"Ah, my boy." He smiled wider. "You're awake."

Luke got the sense this was intentional on his part. Maybe a gas. . .?

He frowned at him sceptically as he came to perch on the. . . bench, next to Luke. At least the cell was standard in _that_ respect: the only furniture was a slab to sleep on, though even that was as strange as the rest of the place. The room itself was hexagonal, and the stone walls. . .

Well, he placed his hand on them and felt emptiness seep in.

"Where—" He swallowed, then tried again, loathe to let Palpatine see his weakness but knowing that it would be better to know, when the time came to escape. "Where am I?"

"In my private cells," came the reply. "You know I couldn't allow you to be incarcerated in the standard ones of the Palace. Nasty little boxes, run by nasty little people."

Yes, Luke thought, staring at him. Those people were _far_ too _little_ for Palpatine's tastes.

Down here. . . his personal _dungeons_. . .

Well. Nestled among the reworked parts of the Jedi Temple, in the heart of the darkness Coruscant was cloaked in, where the shadows crept thick and fast and smothered all light from above, there was quite literally no one to hear him scream.

He met Palpatine's yellow gaze.

Except one who would enjoy it.

He wondered, briefly, if Visz had seen within these walls before he died.

The attack had no warning but he'd been expecting it. Pain blared in his mind and he physically jerked back, on instinct, slamming into the wall and crying out _again_ as new bruises flowered on his back.

But it was nothing compared with his mental torment.

With every slip of concentration he could feel Palpatine's. . . _blaster bolt_. . . burrowing deeper into his mind, splintering as it pierced, and images began to flash before he eyes—

_—Wren, Biggs, Wedge, Hobbie's stunned faces as he flung open the doors on Skystrike—_

_—Ahsoka's shadowy figure beyond the chasm between them, growing larger as he _jumped_—_

_—Leia's anger and shock and _relief_—_

_—It wasn't treason! At least. . . not yet—_

—and he grunted and _shoved _that presence back out, heart pounding, head shattering.

All he'd got was images, gone in a flash.

Even Palpatine could do nothing with images.

"I figured," Luke panted, screwing his eyes as tightly shut as he could while still glaring, "that you'd go for the persuasion first. I'd assume that's what you promised my father?"

"I didn't promise your father anything. You know he's very angry with you—and he just wants you to see sense as soon as possible." A bony hand stroked his face, half-fondly, and Luke yanked his head away in disgust. "But I do intend to start that way—we are perfectly capable of civilised discussion, aren't we? And I would hate to inflict unnecessary pain on you."

_Uh huh._

"Then what was that?" he asked sweetly.

"Just a reminder." Palpatine lay a hand on Luke's knee and. . . pinpricks. . . shot through it. A reminder of the lightning he could and would spark, if Luke decided not to cooperate.

Luke had already decided not to cooperate.

"Of _what_?"

The hand constricted.

"That I am the most powerful person in this galaxy," he said quietly. "You are smart enough to understand—I _know_ you are smart enough to understand—that it is not wise to make an enemy out of me lightly."

He thought, _I don't do it lightly._

But he didn't say it.

He said, "My father is more powerful than you."

He actually gasped aloud at the bolt of electricity that shot through him, then—low voltage, harmless lightning, but it stung enough for tears to burn at the back of his eyes. From the look on Palpatine's face, it hadn't even been intentional.

When Palpatine spoke, it was through gritted teeth. "Your father. . . naturally has more _raw_ power than I have at my command. But this is _my_ Empire, and he serves me _for a reason_. He is bright enough to recognise what you, apparently, are not: I am stronger, more skilled, than your father will ever be." He smiled viciously. "Especially after that. . . tragic occurrence with Kenobi just before you were born."

Luke pointedly didn't think of the voice he'd heard before.

"My father—" he tried again.

"Is a great man," Palpatine said, "but _I_—as he knows, as everyone with _sense_ knows—am greater." His hand moved from Luke's knee to stroke his cheek again; already shuffled back as far as he could go, Luke couldn't move away any further. "And one day, you will be too. I told you that already."

His voice hardened; his hand dropped. "But only if you heed my guidance."

The hand returned to his knee. This time, when Luke flinched at the mild lightning that barrelled through him, it was definitely intentional.

"Do you think you can do that, Luke?"

Luke shook his head. "I won't," he bit out. "I don't want to be a greater man than my father. I want to be a better man than my father."

The hand fell away altogether, and Luke closed his eyes. He knew that position, with Palpatine's hands poised in front of him, hovering before his chest—

"And you are convinced that betraying your family, the Empire you swore to protect, is the way to achieve that?"

Luke, teeth clenched against the onslaught that would be coming _any minute now_, only nodded.

"I had been afraid of that, my boy."

The expected onslaught didn't come.

After several long moments, Luke cracked an eye open to see Palpatine watching him, head tilted, a sadistic smile playing about his lips.

He reached for a comlink and said into it: "Come in."

Red guards upon red guards all filed in upon their master's command, masks as impassive but disdainful as could be, and Luke closed his eyes again. Real fear burned in his throat.

The screaming started a few minutes later.

* * *

Leia slept very, very poorly.

Pain, violet lightning flashing behind her eyes, screams that weren't hers yet burned her throat anyway—

She woke with the sun, though she'd fallen asleep long after it.

She was still utterly exhausted, but she didn't particularly want to fall asleep again after _that_.

So, stretching out with her senses to check that most of the base was still quiet save for the people on night shifts, she settled cross-legged onto her bed and started to meditate.

It. . . calmed her. Sort of. That gaping wound in her chest, the hole in her heart and it her mind, was still raw and flesh and bleeding. But she let the Force wash over it, and the dark side _fed_ off of it, her pain vanishing and tingling in her veins instead as pure, unbridled _power_—

There was a knock at her door.

"Come in," she said without opening her eyes.

For someone accustomed to gargantuan Force presences like her brother, her father, Ahsoka didn't register that clearly. But she _did_ register, and Leia had one of those gargantuan Force presences herself, so she was hyperaware of her every twitch and reach nevertheless.

And Ahsoka's light twitched and reached away from Leia's darkness.

The door hissed open, and that distaste was visible in the twitch of her jaw, the sharp bob of her throat, but her voice was diplomatically calm and neutral as she said, "Padmé's in a holo-conference with some of the members of High Command. They want to talk to you—hear the case for Luke's rescue from you."

Leia. . . thought she might know what that really entailed.

But her meditation wasn't gonna gain her anything more than sending up a flag for her location, so. . .

"Wait outside for a bit; I'll just get dressed."

She emerged a moment later, dressed in the plain Rebel fatigues that had been lying in her room when she arrived, without a rank sewn on. She didn't miss the way Ahsoka's eyes ran over her at the sight of them, or the slight smile that tugged at her lips when she saw how crisp her collar was.

She shook her head. "You're as meticulous as Padmé," she murmured. "Come on."

* * *

The conference was taking place in a room near the south end of the base, underground. It wasn't a big base at all—it only took them a few minutes to get there—and Leia had known that from the number of lives she could feel around them, shining in the Force, but it was stranger to think of it in terms of distance. Dantooine was an obscure farming planet; of course it would be ideal for setting up shop subtly, but only in smaller numbers.

Leia wondered where the rest of the Alliance was.

"It's much more decentralised than the Empire is," Ahsoka said, picking up on her thoughts.

Leia tried to smile, but honestly the lack of sleep and the dreamt-up agony, not to mention the pressure for what she _knew_ was coming, was starting to get to her. Her hands shook slightly.

"I suppose that's the point," she quipped.

Then the corridor sloped down and they were in front of a door, actively guarded by two people: a muscled Sullustan, rank lieutenant, and a human captain, frizzy-haired under her cap. She glanced at Ahsoka, at the authorisation code she handed over, and waved them through.

Ahsoka gestured for Leia to go first. She did.

The room was small, as everything on this planet was, but it wasn't the bare walls, the spick-and-span floors, the low ceiling that caught her attention. It was the comm suite: the loose round table it embodied, and the people whose blue silhouettes hovered around it.

_And _what they were saying.

_"Amidala, you chose to abandon your children fifteen years ago. We will not waste valuable Rebel resources simply because you want them back."_

Padmé was perfectly opposite her—in clear line of sight of the door, and vice versa. Leia saw her flinch clear as day. . . _and_ the hasty, incredibly loaded, _nervous_ glance she shot her upon her entrance.

She didn't reply to that comment. She chose, instead, to say: "Leia Skywalker is here to plead her case herself."

A murmur of surprise—and, Leia was willing to bet and the Force verified—slight fear rippled around the circle. Padmé gestured for Leia to take her place, which she did. . . and instantly felt out of her depth when more surprise followed.

Some of the holograms—particularly a few of aliens—were shorter than her, yes. But she was young and in an unfamiliar playing field.

She swallowed and looked around. "As"—Leia didn't know what title to give Padmé, not here and now, so she gave her none at all—"_she_ said, I am Leia Skywalker. I—"

_"You're a child."_

Leia tamped down on the usual flare of annoyance she felt at that phrase—this was not Tarkin's voice, full of disdain; this was a woman's voice, full of concern—and turned to the speaker. Sure enough: a human woman, dark-skinned and wearing a fine hood that might have been gold beneath the blue shimmer.

She nodded vaguely. "I'm eighteen. My brother—"

_"_You're_ one of Vader's infamous demon twins?"_ another voice interjected.

Leia gritted her teeth. "Yes. I—" was? Am? She was no longer a demon to these people, she hoped, but she would always be a twin.

She hoped.

"I am," she finished, choking the words out. "And. . . I'd like help to rescue my brother."

There was silence all around, then there was the rustling of a cloak as someone stepped forward, and Leia found herself gazing at someone she actually recognised.

Senator Bail Organa.

_"Padmé has told us,"_ he said gently—but sceptically. She could tell that much. _"But we need a reason to first."_

She swallowed again. "He's one of the most powerful Force-users in the galaxy—"

_"And is being held by the two most powerful. Any rescue would be nigh-impossible."_ He interrupted her, but gentled it again with a smile. It didn't quench the fire burning in her gut. _"Try again."_

She did. "The knowledge that both Vader's daughter and his son have defected would be a major propaganda victory for the Alliance, but you won't have the proof to capitulate on it unless he's free and actively working with us—"

_"That still does not change the fact that rescuing him is a suicide mission, Skywalker."_

"_It wouldn't be!_" She wasn't sure where the vehemence came from—or, rather, she knew _exactly_ where the vehemence came from; she didn't know why it hadn't come _earlier_.

This was _her brother_ they were talking about abandoning, leaving for dead; _their_ _spy_, one who'd worked right in the heart of Imperial power for them, not an _average _one, not someone like—

Her heart slowed.

Visz.

Visz had done the same.

And no Rebel rescue had ever come for him.

But they _had_ tried to do what they could to help Andor and Erso—Leia had helped herself—so. . .

Hopefully. . .

"It _wouldn't_ be a suicide mission. Coruscant is a heavily fortified, heavily protected planet, but _I know the Empire_. I know codes—or, if they've changed them, I know how to get them. I know my way around the place, where the Imperial patrols are going, what they're looking for. If I can get down there, I _will_ get my brother out, and you'll have another powerful Force user on your side ready to _take the Empire down_." She ground her teeth. "I'm _not_ asking you to commit troops or men or _anything_; just. . . _some _reinforcements, anything you feel _generous_ enough to share, and _I will make do with what I have, whether you contribute to it or not_."

She took a deep breath.

Unclenched her fists.

Blinked back tears.

"I can do this," she said quietly, "but I cannot do this on my own."

Her gaze sought Padmé's, over the heads of the blue figures, and it met hers. She was reassured. . . but only slightly.

_"Thank you, Skywalker,"_ a man said curtly. His rank plate denoted him a general. Leia tried not to think about how odd—and yet how _right_—it felt to have now been addressed as _Skywalker_, twice.

Padmé came up to retake her place at the round table and Leia left, Padmé's brief squeeze of her hand a cold comfort.

She returned to her room to try and get some rest, but failed. It wasn't even the nightmares this time; it was the fact that every single inch of her was attuned to the verdict that was coming.

Sure enough, the base was fully starting to stir when Ahsoka finally got back to her, and her news was nothing unexpected.

No one had pledged their support.

* * *

The stump of his right wrist no longer hurt.

The rest of him did.

Red swamped his vision, and he wasn't sure if it was blood or the scarlet robes of Palpatine's precious guards or—

—he _screamed_—

—the crimson flash the Force showed him whenever he tried to look at his own pain.

He coughed, and felt blood speckle his chin.

"That's enough for now," Palpatine said.

It wasn't for the guards; the guards retreated immediately in a swirl of bloody cloth, and would have at a simple _stop_. The _for now _ was for Luke.

The door slid shut behind them with a harsh _click_.

Palpatine tutted.

"Look at you," he said, kneeling down. "Look at the mess."

Luke got out, "I. . . wasn't the one who made it."

Palpatine reached out a long, crooked finger and pressed it against Luke's back—into one of the lacerations. Hard.

He screamed.

"No," he sighed, "but you're the one who got yourself into it."

Then he was up again in a flounce of black, and stalking to the door—someone else was coming in. Someone just as red as the guards, but clad in black like Palpatine.

Luke wondered how the Sixth Sister had got permission to remove her helmet.

Palpatine waved a dismissive hand down at him. "Get him cleaned up," he ordered. "And arrange for a replacement hand, we'll want him fully functional when he finally sees the error of his ways. And—"

He looked down at Luke. Shields or not, Luke knew he could tell what he was thinking. Hoping for.

Then again, it wasn't like it was obscure.

"And if you try to escape, boy," he hissed, "I will make the last two hours seem like a pleasant dream compared to what I will do to you."

He crouched back down in front of him again—he probably thought his intimidation wasn't sufficient if he was only on the other side of the (albeit small) cell—and yellow met blue.

One cold, clammy hand took Luke's chin inside itself.

"You are _mine_ now—as you always have been, and you always will be. There is no use resisting."

Luke spat blood in his face.

Palpatine backhanded him. His head snapped to the side.

He saw stars.

"You will learn in time."

He stood again, and said to Mara as he left, "He does not seem to realise the severity of his situation. Feel free to impress it upon him."

Then he was gone. His presence just. . . vanished, in the Force, and Luke's heart sank as he computed what that meant.

Computed what a part of that _severity_ was.

"A perimeter without the Force, huh?" he remarked to Mara as she knelt down and rolled him onto his front by the shoulder, surprisingly gently.

Then her hand contorted on his shoulder, and she was no longer gentle.

"You know that's impossible," she said instead. Very, very coldly. "Just a decent perimeter where no one can _use_ the Force."

These were Palpatine's private dungeons, after all. Built to harbour Jedi, no doubt—or other such. . . _personal_. . . threats.

"Heh." He refused to flinch as she pulled out a cloth bathed in something he hoped was disinfectant but hells, when she swiped it over his back, his legs, it _hurt_. "You know that wouldn't stop me, Jade. He probably does too."

She scrubbed too hard and he _did_ yelp that time. Her vicious satisfaction was evident.

"The several platoons of specially trained royal guards and stormtroopers between here and the only exit would, Skywalker."

He scrunched up his eyes against the pain again; it meant he didn't shoot her the startled, appreciative look he had no doubt he would have otherwise.

_Skywalker_.

"Then again," she said, shoving him to the side and eyeing the blood starting to dry up and flake on the floor. "Feel free to try. I could do with an excuse to run you through."

He swallowed.

"Jade, I—"

She shot him a look and he cried out when she shoved him _a little too hard_ in the shoulder.

He fell silent.

Then— "Did you lose your helmet?"

She cut him a glance at _that_. He wasn't sure what was _in_ that glance, but there was something there.

"I no longer require it."

"Regulations for Inquisitors have changed?"

"I am no longer an Inquisitor."

His eyebrows shot up.

She kept talking—if she had been anyone else, he would have thought she was gloating. "I was promoted in the throne room, just after your. . . _escapade_. Our master told me he saw that I was worthier than any Inquisitor, and that since he was currently lacking for two competent agents"—a smug smile and a glare—"he bestowed upon me a new rank. I am now his Hand. His personal agent. One he trusts above all others."

Luke narrowed his eyes. "I see." _Trust _was not something Palpatine had an abundance of.

"I hope you do. For your sake." Her tone turned venomous. "Because the moment he realises that you're nothing but a liability and a traitor, I'm going to take this new lightsaber he bestowed upon me and carve you into thin, smoking chunks."

"I'm flattered," he drawled.

Then—

Quietly.

"I was going to step forward, you know." Her hands stilled. "Whether Leia ordered me otherwise or not, I was about to step forward. I signed up willingly to put myself in danger, not you. Or anyone else."

She continued swashing her new rag over the floor. "You didn't do it earlier. You knew I was innocent, and you let me lie there and get—"

"Tortured by the man you now profess your undying allegiance to?" Luke offered. "Who _knew_ you were innocent as well?"

She gritted her teeth and said nothing. Just reached for a syringe in the pack she'd brought with her.

Luke understood.

The bite of the needle against his neck, then he was being dragged down into a blissful slumber.

* * *

Skywalker was unconscious when she left, hands covered in blood and head ringing with accusations, both his and her own.

The Sixth Sister. . . no; the Emperor's Hand. . .

. . ._Jade_, he had called her. . .

. . .paused briefly upon her exit, taking a moment to study his face. It was more relaxed in unconsciousness than she had ever seen him when awake, though still tensed in a rictus of pain; he looked genuine.

As he had sounded genuine earlier, when he was in agony and trying not to show it.

She ground her teeth and reached for the code pad to lock the door. It hissed shut behind her.

As he had always seemed genuine, even when he was a Rebel spy. She was the Emperor's Hand, now; she could have no mercy to waste, and certainly not on _him_.

But she still hesitated briefly before locking the door, anyway.


	28. Planet of Ghosts

It was Ahsoka who'd delivered the news that the Rebel leaders had decided not to help them, and it was Ahsoka who tried to help her take her mind off it.

"Fancy a spar?" she asked. "You've got a lightsaber. Let's see how much the Empire really teaches its finest."

She bared her teeth in what might have been a grin, might have been a snarl, and followed.

It wasn't like there was anything _else_ for her to do.

As everything on the Dantooine base was, the sparring hall was repurposed from being something else. Here it was an empty hangar which was only designed to hold one ship—hence why it was currently sitting empty—and wasn't quite large enough for someone like Leia or her brother to have the advantage against someone larger than them. Not when they relied more on speed and agility than brute strength. But it would have been serviceable—especially if Leia was looking to practise fighting in close quarters.

That wasn't the problem.

The problem was that they weren't alone there.

The humming of lightsabers already crowded the hangar, along with grunts, thuds and groans. Leia paused, reached out. . . and felt both those light Force presences ahead of them tense.

"Did you—"

"Quiet."

Their shields went up. Leia snorted in scorn. Had they only sensed her from that clumsy probe? And was _that_ their version of _effective shielding_?

The door hissed open, and Leia sensed them tense again.

Then Ahsoka walked through, and all was calm.

"Ahsoka?" came a boyish, too-inquisitive-for-his-own-good voice. Leia hung by the door to see three people in the room: a tall, poised man with a mask-like covering over half his face and a ponytail, a boy about Luke's age with tan skin and scars across his cheekbone, and a girl Leia's age or older, sitting against the wall, with short hair dyed every shade of pink the galaxy had ever seen.

While the two males—both holding lightsabers—fixated on Ahsoka, _she_ looked straight at Leia, hanging back with the sort of lurking menace only a child of Darth Vader could possess, and narrowed her eyes.

"I didn't know you were on Dantooine," the man—a Jedi, Leia realised, and a blind one at that—observed.

"I arrived yesterday evening with Leia."

The two Jedi seemed to realise her existence, then; she held in a snort. Both turned towards her—the boy with startled blue eyes that reminded her achingly of Luke, though the shade of blue was totally different, and the man with a tilt of his head.

Ahsoka turned as well. . . then paused, amused, at the look on her face. "Ah yes. Leia, I assume you know who these three are?"

She didn't _know_, but she was pretty certain she could make an educated guess. There weren't many Jedi in the Alliance—or the entire _galaxy_—after all.

"The _Ghost_ crew. Kanan Jarrus," she said, nodding at the man. She decided it might be a bit tactless to call him _Caleb Dume. _"Ezra Bridger. And. . ." She glanced at the girl on the floor. She had been the Rebel operative that Luke had cooperated with on his mission to Skystrike. "Sabine Wren."

Bridger, most of all, looked taken aback. Wren looked even warier than before. Only Jarrus seemed to remain calm; in fact, he felt like there was a great well of peace spreading out from within him. Like he didn't move through the galaxy; the galaxy moved around him, and he found no fault in its turning.

It annoyed her, to be frank. That much light. . . it just seemed wasteful, when there were such quicker ways of achieving one's aims through the Force.

"This," Ahsoka said with a wave of her hand, "is my old master's daughter."

Bridger and Jarrus, at least, must have known who Ahsoka's old master had been before she left the Jedi, because they both frowned, tilting their heads in the same way as they began to figure it out. . .

"Leia Skywalker."

They all jerked back. Wren actually shoved herself off the wall, to her feet, and stared.

Took several steps across the hangar until she was standing in front of Leia. She stared at her hip—her lightsaber—then her face.

"You don't have the demon eyes," she said. Her eyes hadn't widened from their narrow glare for an instant.

Leia smiled a little, tilting her head. "Not right now, I don't."

Wren was visibly unsettled by that, but she was Mandalorian—she thrived on confrontation.

So she pushed, "I assume it was your brother who betrayed us at Skystrike?"

"From what I heard, it wasn't you he was betraying," she shot back. "His job was to turn you all in. He let you all go."

"He took a hell of a long time to do it. A man _died_ because he—"

"Took more than five minutes to shake off a decade of Imperial conditioning and loyalty?"

Wren frowned, half taking a step back—both at her words _and _their implication.

"It was a complicated time. For everyone. I doubt you want to hear the full story."

"Try me." Wren smiled. "Where's your brother? I have a few more _questions_ for him about what happened at Skystrike."

The words drove the breath out of her lungs.

She ignored Wren's sudden bewilderment as she struggled to get her breathing out of control, struggled not to let herself reach for that section of her heart that was cordoned off, walled away, the wound gaping and raw.

Struggled.

"Captured," she said quietly. "During the escape. By my father."

No one needed to Force to hear the disgust in that last word.

"You look like you haven't slept," Jarrus said gently. His gentleness was exactly what she didn't need right now—there were two people in her life who were allowed to be gentle with her, and one had just cut the hand off of and tortured the other.

Except. . . now she had Padmé.

Ahsoka was clearly trying her best to look after her.

And Jarrus—

She snorted. "That's 'cause I haven't."

Ahsoka frowned. "Leia. . ."

"He's my _twin_, and he's in _Palpatine's_ hands. Did you really think I couldn't feel _exactly what was happening to him_?"

Ahsoka flinched. "_Leia_. . ."

"It's alright." It wasn't, not by a long shot, but she would _make it alright_. If it was the last thing she did.

She knew it might well be.

She reached for her lightsaber and lit it. She ignored the side glances all the light side users gave the red blade as she tested it in her hand. She was still a bit sore from the chase and the flight from the throne room—not much bacta on the _Hidden Star_—but bruises were bruises. She could deal.

"I believe we came here to spar?" she said.

* * *

The droid jabbed his palm and Luke flinched, automatically curling the fingers of this new, _wrong_ hand as he did. Evidently it was the result the droid wanted to see, because it moved on to prodding each individual fingertip, and Luke zoned out. Minor stabs and twitching, he could ignore.

He didn't know how long he'd been sitting here, since the droid had entered and roughly woken him from his slumber. He didn't know how long he'd been unconscious.

The droid repeated its stabbing, and Luke continued to ignore it.

But once the droid was gone, even with the knowledge that his cell was monitored and probably used for Palpatine's own personal amusement, _the hand_ was something he could not ignore.

It felt. . . off. It was stiff, certainly, though the droid had told him to expect such a thing. It just. . . lacked scars. The synthskin was a fresh and unmarred as the skin of a newborn. His palms were no longer callused, his skin not unevenly tanned or burnt, his fingers didn't move with the same. . . fluidity. . . anymore.

He stared at the hand in his lap. He clenched it into a fist.

His father had done this to him.

The bunk underneath him startle to tremble. His _father_, the man he'd _adored_ and _idolised_, _had done this to him_—

"Anakin used to tell me that one gets used to it in time."

Luke snapped his head up. "Who's there."

He _really_ hoped the holocams were image only.

A bluish. . . _shimmer_. . . on the air, then something more solid as light half played across its surface, half passed right through. It seemed to emit its own light, somehow, in the way that holograms did, or even in the way some of the most farfetched stories about students of the Force would describe—

Luke's eyes blew wide at the blue coalesced into something recognisable—something that _registered_ in his senses.

"You're a ghost."

The. . . apparition. . . smiled. "Indeed I am. I suppose you could call me that."

"What else could I call you?"

That smile shrank a little.

"Obi-Wan Kenobi," he said.

Luke blinked.

Had that droid injected him with any drugs? Was he hallucinating? He had to be, because—

"_Old Ben_?"

It'd been nearly eleven years since Luke had seen him die, carved in half by the first lightsaber Luke had ever seen—the one that had taught him to fear them. Sure, he'd been the one to take them from— to _guard them_ for their mother, and spend years watching over them on Tatooine, but if he could become a ghost why had he only shown up now. . .?

Ben perched daintily on the bunk in the cell, but Luke was too astonished—and _antsy_—to sit as well.

"I am," he said heavily. "And I'm sorry."

"For what?"

"For failing to fully protect you on Tatooine, all those years ago."

"What?" Luke thought about it. "No! My father—"

"Killed Owen and Beru and stole your memories. Taught you to support an immoral government. And. . ." He gave Luke's hand a pitiful look.

Luke clenched that hand. "Yes, but—"

Ben gave _him_ a pitiful look.

"He—" His heart hammered in his chest; his words were half repetition, half _emotion_. "I _love_ my father. I don't regret that he found us, I love him and he loves us, and he's taken care of us as best he could. . ."

"Yes," Ben drawled, eyes drawn back to the mechanical hand like a magnet, "that is why death has followed you since the moment you laid eyes on him."

Aunt Beru and Uncle Owen's screams filled the silence in his head.

Luke shook his head.

"What do you want?" he whispered.

"I want to help you, Luke. I couldn't come earlier—you were too dark, and it was too difficult, but now it is of utmost necessity. You have to get through this."

He mumbled, "I already knew _that_." Then he shook himself. "How long can you stay?"

"I estimate twenty minutes at any one time, then I must recover from the effort." If Ben's grimace was any indication, he was as displeased with that number as Luke was.

But it was what they had. And it was what they'd have to work with.

"So," Luke said, letting out a sigh through his nose, "how are you going to help me?"

Ben folded his hands in his lap, and looked at him. His gaze moved slowly over his torn and bloodied black clothing, to the open hatch in his mechanical hand, before he finally looked Luke in the eye.

His voice was grave. "I know you have lived and breathed the dark side and the power it offers for a decade now, Luke, but I also know that you are not truly one of its disciples. And when Palpatine comes to hurt you with it, you cannot fight fire with fire."

Luke gritted his teeth. "So you're here to spout Jedi nonsense?"

"No." Ben gave a stiff chuckle. "No—at least, I don't think it's nonsense. I just know that when you spend long enough in a dark place, having one lie repeated to you over and over and over, you may start to forget that it's a lie." He made a strange motion with his hand, towards Luke's shoulder, then aborted the gesture. "I just. . . want to be able to remind you that there's a life—and a different opinion—beyond these walls as well. If you want to talk, if you think it would help. . . it would be my pleasure."

Luke raised an eyebrow. "Useful."

"I will, of course, also do my best to appear to Ahsoka and your sister whenever I have the energy and assist them with the rescue attempt wherever possible. You can use me to pass messages."

Luke raised the other eyebrow, considered it, then nodded a little. "More useful."

"And I will warn you." Ben leaned forward. "Palpatine is returning. And he will bring every weapon at his disposal, every skill, every manipulation, to bear against you." A pause, then a sorrowful— "Even the ones you handed him yourself."

"What does _that_ mean?" Luke asked—almost _whined_—but then he blinked.

Ben was gone.

And he could hear footsteps approaching beyond the cell door.

Murmuring, imperious voices, then the door slid to just long enough for the man who now haunted Luke's nightmares to step through, before it closed behind him.

Palpatine smiled.

"Good morning, my boy," he greeted. Luke, based on the rotation of the meals and the timing of the droid and just _a feeling_, had the sneaking suspicion it was late afternoon. "How is your hand?"

Luke couldn't resist the jab— "Better now that I have one."

"Ah yes." Palpatine held out his own hand. Luke debated refusing, but he knew exactly what that would lead to. He gave him his artificial hand and let him examine it. "That _was_ particularly brutal of Lord Vader, wasn't it? I understand that he uses limb amputation to punish or teach the Inquisitors, or to deescalate a fight very quickly, but from what he told me there was none of that! He must have felt threatened."

Threatened_._

_Threatened?_

His father? _Darth Vader?_

_Threatened_ by his son offering his hand and asking for them to be a family again?

_Hmm_, Luke thought. He put it aside to dwell on later.

Palpatine's fingers drummed along Luke's palm, then his knuckles, then his fingertips. Luke tried not to grind his teeth.

"It was the best quality we have, you know."

"I'm thankful for it."

"Only the best for my heir."

He could dwell on the implications of _that_ later as well.

"Or rather," he corrected himself, "my _heirs_. I'm sure that once we find Leia, she will come around as well, won't she?"

Luke said nothing.

"Have you any idea where she is? We'll have to find her as soon as possible—the Rebel leadership might have promised you both amnesty, but I wouldn't put it past that terrorist rabble to disobey even their chosen leaders in order the exact vengeance on the daughter of Darth Vader." There was an odd glint in Palpatine's eye. "One of the demon twins."

Luke. . . hadn't thought about that.

It flashed to mind, too quickly for him to dismiss as a fancy: pilots and maintenance workers and ground troopers converging on Leia alone, as Ahsoka stood back and let it happen, watched her getting beaten black and blue, bruised and bones broken—

Worry, violent violet and sharp, fizzed in his chest.

And Luke realised what Palpatine was doing.

_He will bring every weapon at his disposal, every skill, every manipulation, to bear against you._

_Even the ones you handed him yourself._

He buried that stab of realisation under more worry, blooming red with helpless fury at the image of his sister in a medbay, skin more bruised than blank, and a medic who treated her in disgust.

Ridiculous, he told himself. The whole scenario was ridiculous—Ahsoka was a good person, and Padmé Amidala was their _mother_.

But emotions were not rational and they did not go away.

All the better.

"If we only knew where she was, we'd be able to find her faster—save her faster." Palpatine released his hand and let it drop back to the bunk. "Do you know where she went?"

Luke shook his head.

"Come, now, my boy," he coaxed. "You must have some idea?"

"I have none."

"Did _Fulcrum_ never mention anything of that to you?"

Luke looked at him like he was an imbecile. "They're an intelligence agent. They're not going to let slip vital intelligence to someone in the heart of Imperial territory."

Palpatine frowned in a grandfatherly-like fashion. Luke wondered why he still bothered with the act, but supposed it was difficult for him to break the habit. "You mean to tell me that you had no idea where they would take you once you fled? Luke, I never thought you were this naive."

"It wasn't naivety." Luke smiled at his own joke before he made it. "It was a leap of faith."

"And that clearly ended well for you."

He tried not to think about whistling winds halted dead, hanging in space by a grip on his throat—

He shrugged. "For me? No. For Leia. . ."

"For Leia, it could end even _worse_." Cracks were beginning to show in the facade. Palpatine leaned forward, spittle bursting from his mouth to spatter Luke's face. "Luke, we _must_ find her. Is she on Chandrila?"

"I don't know."

"Lothal?"

"I don't know."

"Alderaan?"

"_I don't know_."

"Naboo?"

"I don't know!" But Luke let himself hesitate, let that image swell back into his mind and let himself feel _worried_—let Palpatine feel that violent violet worry, as well.

Palpatine could use Luke's techniques all he wanted. But Luke could use them better.

He patted his cheek.

"Naboo, then. Good boy; we'll have your sister safe and well in no time."

Then he turned away.

"_Naboo_," he continued. "My homeworld—_her_ homeworld. I should have known _she'd_ set up there. To add insult to injury, I suppose. . .?"

He wasn't really expecting an answer. He just narrowed his eyes at Luke. "Your father departed for Naboo. He will have arrived by now—"

Palpatine froze.

"He will have arrived by now," he said silkily. Oh no. "And he would have sensed Leia if she was on the planet."

He turned, strode back to Luke and dragged him upright by the front of his shirt. And _glared_.

"You clever boy," he hissed. "You try so hard. But I _will_ find Leia. You know I will. And _you_, meanwhile, _will_ tell me what I want to know—"

Luke wrenched his head back at the spike that shot into it and screamed.

* * *

A few days passed in quick succession and Leia had nothing to do.

She. . . bounced around a lot; apparently Padmé was as loathe to leave her idle as she was loathe to be idle. Although she never slept well, the paperwork she filled out for Padmé's aides, the supplies she organised and distributed for maintenance, the missives she translated for the comms officers, were all impeccable.

For now.

Dantooine was a small base. Most people here were on loan from other bases, it seemed—the Phoenix Squadron from Atollon, the mechanics from Yavin IV, the pilots from Ryloth. For a base that was the legislative heart of the Rebellion, it held very few Rebels itself, and thus became a very. . . tight-knit crew. She supposed it made it easier to root out security breaches.

She never bothered ingratiating herself into that circle. She was Amidala and Tano's _guest_ instead, the one who was polite but stonily silent, and everyone else seemed to respect that.

The Spectres hadn't told anyone who she was. She had the feeling that she wouldn't be afforded such generosity if it got out.

She was translating another message from Huttese to Basic when Ahsoka found her, so immersed in the words that inadvertently reminded her of the first home she remembered that she didn't notice the woman until she placed a gentle hand on her shoulder.

Leia jumped so hard she slammed her knees against the desk.

It _hurt_. Datapads slid off the desk and clattered to the floor; several other officers shot her concerned looks before her mutinous face had them glancing away just as quickly. She took a deep breath and drew on the pain in her kneecaps, felt the dark side glitter in her veins like stardust, before she turned to look at Ahsoka.

The room had grown colder—the other officers shivered—but what did she care?

Ahsoka pinched her lips. "May I speak to you outside?"

Leia walked outside with her in lieu of answering.

Ahsoka took a moment to study her, the way her fingers twitched at her sides, the bags under her eyes, before she observed, "You seem antsy."

Leia gritted her teeth. "I'm fine. I just need a little saber practise, blow off some steam."

"You haven't left the base in a week."

"I said I'm _fine_."

"How about a mission?"

Leia blinked.

Shook her head, more out of denial than refusal. "You— you want me to go on a mission for you?"

Ahsoka crossed her arms. "Yes."

"You—" _You trust me enough for that?_

Ahsoka, for all that Leia hadn't voiced the thought aloud, said, "Yes."

Leia swallowed. "What is it?" She wouldn't say yes until she knew.

"Walk with me," Ahsoka said, gesturing down the corridor. They walked to a small room just down the corridor—an unused office from when this base had been the area's main archive for farm records—and Ahsoka leaned against the window there, peering out at the golden fields swaying in the sun. "If I remember correctly, you were on Naboo when Saw launched his attack there?"

"It wasn't a very good attack."

Ahsoka laughed. "No. It wasn't. But that's because it wasn't an attack—it was a distraction. He had other things going on."

Despite herself, her interest was piqued. "Such as?"

Ahsoka traced a pattern in the dust on the windowsill. "You are aware of Naboo's natural resources? Why it's such a wealthy economy?"

"Yes." Leia nodded. "The human colonists had a lot of money to begin with, so Naboo was able to thrive off its reputation as a planet of artisans and creative pursuits—of culture." She smirked. "But also because it's one of the largest natural sources of plasma in the galaxy."

"So," Ahsoka let her hand drop back to her side, "do you see why Saw wanted to sneak in and establish a small base there?"

"I do."

"We're as low on resources as he is—lower. We want in on it. Want him to _cooperate_ with us." Ahsoka smiled. "So we're sending you."

Leia stared.

Then she burst out laughing.

"_Me_?" she asked. Ahsoka nodded, smiling queerly, and she guffawed again. "You're both crazy. I _shot_ most of the Partisans when I was there."

"They won't," Ahsoka agreed, "but this way at least we're being upfront about who we're dealing with."

"Still. Padmé's _insane_."

"Actually, it was my plan."

"Then you're insane."

"I hope not." There was humour in that tone, but. . . also a little self-deprecation, as well. Leia wondered about it. "I just have a good feeling about sending you—it took a lot to convince Padmé. She doesn't want to put you in danger. Latent maternal feelings, I expect."

"Very latent," Leia muttered.

Ahsoka pretended not to hear. "Our intel tells us that Vader has been in the Naboo system for a few days, but he'll be leaving tomorrow—and gone by the time you arrive. Just be careful of any Imperials nearby; your image might already be wanted by the Empire."

"I understand."

"Everything?"

Leia considered. "One question."

"Shoot."

"Didn't Padmé split from Gerrera for a reason?"

Ahsoka let out a deep breath.

". . .yes," she admitted, "and she is not happy that she has reached a point where she has to re-establish ties. But we are reaching a critical point of this war, and we desperately need the Alliance to come together at this time—we need every resource we can get. We can defeat the Empire together, or we cannot defeat them at all."

Leia scoffed. "Do you want me to be taking notes so I can parrot this to him, or. . .?"

"Leia." That was the. . . not _sharpest_, but most serious tone she'd heard from Ahsoka so far. "This is vitally important. This stage of the war, these next few months. . . they could change the galaxy."

She sighed. "What I told you about Operation Eclipse remains incredibly, incredibly relevant. Padmé always had more to her plan than having someone on the inside to carry it out—there were always contingencies, and if we frame them right, we can do this without an inside agent at all.

"There's an end goal to all of this," she said, "and it's much closer than I think you realise."

Leia was silent for a moment. "And the odd map in the office?"

Ahsoka shot her an exasperated look. "I can't tell you about that."

"Alright then." She smiled sunnily. "I'll go to Naboo and play nice with Gerrera. If you really think it would help."

Ahsoka, incredibly, laughed a little. She was giving Leia a look that felt like something her father sometimes gave her, when he was feeling pensive and shrewd and _thinking_. She wondered if he'd been the one Ahsoka learnt it from.

"I'm glad," she said.

* * *

Shields slammed up in front of the spike almost by instinct but it kept driving through, kept _pushing_, and hairline cracks started to spread—

Luke scrunched his eyes shut. There was suddenly a bony hand at his throat; his head was slammed into the wall, hard, and a strangled cry was wrenched from his lips as he gasped for breath. Tears leaked from his eyes. He tried to jerk his head forward, to loosen that gnarled grip, but it only tightened and he choked.

That spike was getting colder, so cold it burned, a spot deep in Luke's mind so cold that cracks and fissures webbed out from it like ice shattering glass—

Then Luke's shields collapsed.

Momentarily. But that moment was all that was enough for Palpatine to _get in_, to be standing in a memory of standing in the Imperial throne room, diamond-stars glinting above him, watching violet lightning lance out to strike Jade down—

_No_.

Luke wrenched the fabric of the memory away and suddenly they were standing in something Palpatine had already glimpsed, that he'd already peripherally known about:

_"You're a J—"_

_"Not exactly."_

Wren's face, creased with confusion—

_"'Not exactly'? Who else is there?"_

—and slowly dawning understanding.

"_Demon_."

The stab of rejection he'd barely felt at the time, but that he now felt _keenly_—that Palpatine _fed off of_—and the worry, looking at the others, that they'd follow her example.

_"Why should I trust you? You're an _Imperial_, you're—"_

Palpatine was clearly very interested in what he said _next_.

_"I know exactly who I am. If I wanted you dead, I would have left you to Pryce. Now, I suggest you get moving, before she manages to catch up with you._

_"And tell Amidala," _Palpatine leaned in, curious and smiling broadly,_ "that Luke Skywalker sends his regards."_

They fled.

"Well, child," Palpatine mused. "You were certainly prone to _grandiose gestures_, weren't you? It's a wonder you weren't found out immediately."

Luke ignored him. He knew what was coming next. And he didn't want to incriminate that ISB officer—Kallus?—as well.

"But I'm curious—was this the point of your treason? Was this what triggered it? Four pathetic cadets trying to undermine the great order we've sacrificed so much for—"

Luke tossed him out.

The shock of a heartbeat, then Luke was dragging in deep, bruised breaths of air as Palpatine staggered back, eyes narrowing. The harsh white light of the cell was painful after the sun-branded memory.

"_Luke Skywalker sends his regards_," Palpatine mocked. "How dramatic."

He took several more steps forward; Luke took a step back, massaging his throat. He didn't bother disguising his fear; it would only amuse him, and he would drink it in either way.

The walls of his mind were rattled, like flagstones without cement, but with every moment he had to stare into that serpent's eyes he rebuilt them dry.

He had to.

Palpatine reached out a finger to tilt his chin up, then to trail it along the purpling skin around Luke's neck.

"But you didn't give me what I was looking for," he finished softly—oh so softly, like the whisper of wind that warned of a sandstorm. "So.

"Let's try that again then, shall we?"


	29. Naboo

They left for Naboo in the _Hidden Star _the next morning.

Leia was both surprised and unsurprised when she saw the group of people she'd be working with on Naboo. Jarrus, Bridger, and two dark-haired pilots, whose names she sifted from their minds to be Wedge Antilles and Biggs Darklighter.

She lightly touched the spot in her pocket, where the long-range comlink Ahsoka had given her to contact her with lay. She and Padmé, she grumbled to herself, were definitely up to something.

But they all filed onto the _Star_ with minimal talking, Bridger drifting over to strike up a friendly exchange with the pilots. It was clear they all knew each other—as of a few months ago, after Skystrike, they were all members of the Lothal Rebel cell, and Leia found herself clutching the strings of her pack close to herself to ward against the feeling of. . . being alone.

It was a foreign and unpleasant feeling.

As most of the boys took their seats around the table in the main room, Leia hovered in the doorway and felt a hand land on her shoulder. She tensed.

"Relax," Jarrus said. The word was more soothing suggestion than order. She looked up at him, doing her best to look where she imagined his eyes were behind the mask, despite the fact he couldn't see the contact. She'd had practise, what with her father. "Have you had anymore sleep?"

She gritted her teeth. "No."

"Your brother?"

"Of course."

"If you like," he offered, "I have some things that are able to block the Force, or Force bonds. Temporarily. Ahsoka gave them to me for when avoiding Inquisitors, and I'm sure she has a larger collection of the artefacts. If you can use them while you sleep, they might be able to block the nightmares long enough for you to get rest."

"I. . ." She chewed on her lip.

She didn't want to admit that the nightmares. . . comforted her, in some perverse way, as much as they tormented her.

At least they told her that her brother was still alive.

"I'll keep it in mind," she promised. "For when we get back from Naboo."

If Jarrus could hear the half-lie in her voice, he didn't say anything. "I'm glad." he gave her shoulder a light push. "Now let's join the others."

Leia followed his lead, feeling—despite herself—like at least one burden had rolled off her shoulders.

"I assume we're the ones flying?" Darklighter said, gesturing to himself and Antilles. He glanced at Jarrus.

Jarrus crossed his arms. "If you like," he said, "it'd be best. Unless Leia wants to fly?" She started, shooting him a surprised glance. "It's her ship, after all."

"This is your ship?"

Leia glanced at Antilles and nodded.

He frowned, and glanced around the room. Everyone else was being. . . notably quiet. Even Darklighter.

"I don't think we've been introduced," he said. "I'm Wedge Antilles. You're Leia. . .?"

She smiled, at that. Only a little, but enough. "Leia Skywalker."

Darklighter stifled a laugh at the _shock_ that roiled on Antilles's face.

"_Skywalker_? As in—"

"We're flying then?" Darklighter asked. Leia nodded, her smile vanishing. "Then let's go."

He took Antilles by the arm and made to steer him away, but Antilles resisted for barely long enough to pause and ask, "Any relation to a Luke Skywalker?"

Darklighter dragged him into the cockpit. Leia laughed. A bit. It wasn't happy, but it wasn't vindictive either.

"He's my brother," she called out after him, and laughed again at the flood of curse words.

Ahsoka and Padmé had _definitely_ been up to something, she thought.

* * *

"So," after they jumped to hyperspace, Antilles plopped himself into a seat opposite her on the table and eyed the dejarik board projected over it. "May I ask you some questions about your brother?"

"Savrip to D9," Leia said, and smirked at Bridger's groan as his karkath was flattened. "Sure, but I get the feeling it's about Skystrike and, y'know, I wasn't there for that."

"You don't know much about it?"

"I know he grew to kind of like you, Antilles, and it triggered a crisis of faith." She narrowed her eyes as Bridger shifted his monnox and quickly moved her own out the way. "There were other factors, naturally, it was more of a right-place, right-time thing."

"So that was when he defected? What job did you two even do for the Empire, anyway?"

"He didn't defect until later." Her voice came out with more snap than she meant it to, but she didn't regret it. "As I said, there were other factors, it was a complicated decision, and it's a long story."

Antilles raised an eyebrow belligerently. "We've got time."

Darklighter, however, seemed ever-so-slightly more sensitive about the topic. "Where is he now?" he asked gently—though, as someone who'd put up with her on the flight to Dantooine from Coruscant, he _certainly_ already knew.

Antilles, however, shut his mouth as it clicked.

"Captured and tortured." She tilted her head and pointedly didn't look at any of the boys—at the horrified, pitiful expressions she knew they were wearing. "Strider to A2," she said, smiling sweetly at the bout of cursing. "I win, Bridger."

Bridger whacked the holoprojector in a surprisingly juvenile motion for someone Leia's age and scowled. The projection flickered out. "Just call me Ezra."

She paused.

Frowned.

". . .okay," she said finally, though she didn't stop frowning.

"Yeah, just call us all by our first names," Antilles added, already switching on the projector again so that he could have a game. "Otherwise it gets all stiff and formal."

_Stiff and formal. . .?_ "Alright," Leia said.

She didn't stop frowning until she laughed:

Biggs had taken all of Wedge's pieces in under five minutes.

* * *

They arrived on Naboo soon enough and Leia held her breath at the sight of Palpatine's idyllic homeworld spread out before her like a tapestry in blue and green. The last time she'd been here, Gerrera had tried to drench the place in blood.

"Naboo," Wedge murmured. Something like awe was in his voice.

"Now," Jarrus—Kanan—said. "You all know what we're here to do. Vader left the system only a few days ago, so we have to keep our heads down, or he'll be fully capable of rushing back to crush us. We just need to find Saw's Partisans, then we can open up the negotiations we came here to start. We're not here to cause trouble."

Ezra scoffed. "Why would Vader bother with us? We're tiny to him. Nothing."

Then he followed Kanan's gaze to Leia and said, "Oh."

"What?" Wedge asked, sharing a confused look with Biggs, but no one moved to answer them.

The comms crackled. _"Trading ship _Liberty's Death_, this is Naboo air traffic control. Please state your passengers and business on Naboo."_

"'_Liberty's Death_'?" Biggs echoed. "Some transponder code."

Leia shrugged. "We're on Naboo," she said, then leaned forward to peer out the window. "It seemed fitting."

* * *

Theed was as beautiful as Leia remembered. One would never think that a river of deadly molten plasma ran right under it.

She clutched her satchel against her chest and narrowed her eyes at the shops near the spaceport, wondering if she should buy a _History Students of Theed _rucksack again, to blend in. But she truthfully didn't need the extra space: all she had with her this time were a few changes of clothes, her lightsaber and a blaster Padmé had given her. The pack she'd been given would do.

They converged in a small café, dressed and chattering like tourists, drawing no more than the usual grimaces of artisans trying to soak in the creative atmosphere. Leia ordered a small fruitcake and a glass of water, then munched on it while Kanan spoke again.

"In order to see as much of the city as we can, we should split up," he said. He didn't say it _carefully_—saying things slowly, weighted with meaning, would be even more suspicious than saying it outright—but he said it intentionally, in a way that could be a message in itself, or could just be his normal speech pattern. "If we split up, in groups of two or so, then communicate via comlink?"

"There's five of us, Kanan," Ezra pointed out through a mouthful of crumbs. They sprayed out across the table and Leia grimaced. He swallowed hastily. "Then there'll be a three."

"Or I can go alone," Leia offered.

Kanan frowned. "Are you sure?"

"Yeah. I've been here before, you haven't; I'm the best choice to go on my own."

Wedge blinked. "You've been here before?" he asked, and Biggs elbowed him.

Kanan's frown only deepened, but he said, "Alright. We'll meet back at the ship in five hours, no matter what we all find, understand? But the moment we see something interesting, make sure you contact the others—we don't want anyone else to miss it."

"Agreed," Leia said, and the others echoed the sentiment.

Once they left the café, Kanan and Ezra headed south, towards the Palace and the waterfalls—and the caves therein. Biggs and Wedge, meanwhile, headed west to the industrial districts—where one might expect an industrial process to be carried out.

Leia followed neither of their examples.

She headed east—towards the clouds in the sky, hanging over the residential districts and the elegant townhouses situated there.

Padmé had mentioned offhand that her family's old house was there—that her family, Leia's grandparents, aunt and uncle, cousins, still lived there, when not at the family retreat of Varykino.

Leia wasn't drawn there because of family ties, it was something more connected to the Force and destiny than that, but. . .

One thing she _did_ do was take the more. . . _circuitous_. . . route round to where the Force was egging her to go.

It took her past a townhouse no different from the others, but vastly different to Leia.

The street itself was as beautiful as them all, full of honey stone arches draped in climbing flowers—some lilac, some red, some pink. The paving slabs were pale blue, easy to walk on, and trees dotted every alcove, blossoming with all the colours that Coruscant didn't have.

Leia paused outside that house and breathed in deeply, the scent of a thousand flowers flooding her lungs. The air was cleaner here than it ever was on Coruscant, even though she was at the very heart of the capital city.

For a moment, she let herself wonder what it might have been like to grow up here, amongst the richness and the elegance and the _comfort_ of a planet like this.

But that façade was deceptive, she knew.

Naboo may be idyllic on the surface, but beneath that it held so much more. Its fields and its harmless livestock rolled over a core of waterways holding increasingly vicious sea creatures. Its peaceful and pro-pacifist politics belied centuries of war and colonialism against the native Gungans. The beauty and extravagance of the wardrobe—_especially_ the Queen's wardrobe—hid the blasters and listening devices and the wearer's deadly skill beneath the fabric.

The way Palpatine hid his brutality behind a grandfatherly veneer.

The way Padmé spoke of peace and waged war.

Leia rested a hand on the stone of the beautiful archways, so much stronger and _tougher_ than its loveliness implied.

This planet had produced both of them. Polar opposites; each other's foil.

And they had both produced her.

Leia cast one more longing look at the townhouse she'd come here to see—built into the stone arches, with little in way of a front but steps that led up to the front door and potted plants adorning every metre—before she turned and continued on.

This planet was where the war had started, the moment Queen Amidala and Senator Palpatine were introduced.

And this planet was where the next step of it would unravel.

She didn't look back as she walked away, which was a shame. If she had, she might have noticed the shadow at the window of one of the neighbouring houses, watching her every move.

* * *

Vader's heart skipped a beat, the pacemakers protesting vehemently, when he read the report.

Barely a few days since he'd stationed the agent to watch Padmé's family and their home for contact with Leia or the Rebellion, and they were already seeing results.

_And_ there were a mere few hours' hyperspace trip away.

"Captain Piett," he boomed, making the slight man start, though he did an admirable job of not showing it. The same could not be said for the rest of the bridge crew. "Set a course for Naboo. We will be return immediately for a short errand."

And it would be short. Already, his thoughts were starting to race—how he could secure Leia quickly, how he could convince her of his aims, how they could retrieve Luke and overthrow the Emperor together—and the metal of the datapad creaked under his grip.

_Soon_, he promised himself, and watched the stars stretch beyond the viewports.

* * *

It was a small park not far from the townhouse that the Force led her to, and she seated herself on a bench under a graceful domed gazebo next to a young brown-haired woman, watching the clear water trickle by in the stream. It was soothing, she registered—as far as she could register such things, anymore.

The Force was still nudging her, so she lifted her gaze from the water to scan the park. A young man with a viol stood in the bandstand a little way away, a young woman seated on the steps at his feet and singing along in a gentle, lilting voice. Gardens overflowed with plant species of all colours to the left; an interconnecting network of streams and waterbeds fanned out from a pond in the centre, with walkways and bridges of polished grey stone in and around lilypads and lilies; to the right, in the distance, trees cloaked a green field she could sense people running around in. Laughter carried on the wind.

She laughed herself in response. Something about the atmosphere in this place made her relax. She laughed again.

The woman next to her tensed.

She had, Leia observed without looking at her, been growing increasingly on edge since Leia had taken her seat beside her. When she finally let her gaze sweep back round again, to rest lazily on her face, her brain ticked over it.

She'd seen that face before.

A fairly attractive face, earnest unlike the way Luke was earnest, but in the way Leia knew she would tell her exactly what she thought, regardless of reprisal. She let her eyebrows crease slightly and felt a stab of recognition from the woman.

So. She'd seen Leia somewhere. Where had Leia seen her?

Instead of outright asking, Leia slipped off her bag and slipped off the bench, to crouch by the edge of the gazebo and trail her hand in the water. She sat side-on to the woman, legs half-bent out in front of her, leaning against one of the pillars.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" she commented.

The woman turned her—surprisingly hard, especially against the softness of Naboo's façade—gaze on Leia and only nodded.

Leia kept trailing her hand in the stream. It was warm, she noted—warmer than the mild but pleasant weather would cause. She wondered if it was the plasma running close to the surface that did it.

She began to trace circles in the water, watching the ripples fan out, then she brushed her fingers along the ivory petals of one of the waterlilies. It was clammy to the touch.

"Beautiful flowers, especially," she continued, "and I like waterlilies, but I thought I even saw some starflowers scattered about over there."

She lifted her gaze again to meet the woman's, calm and steady and _intent_. "Hidden."

The woman blinked as the pieces fell into place.

Her holo came back to mind, studied back when Leia was on Coruscant and still buzzing with guilt at the fact she'd helped the Rebel spies escape to her brother's detriment—as did the curses the ISB agent presenting it had unleashed when he'd realised exactly who it was they'd had right under their noses.

"I'm Leia Skywalker," she offered. She thought she saw the woman mouth _demon_ and her eyes slid to her bag. The glint of a lightsaber hilt was barely visible.

"I'm Liana Hallik," she offered in response, and Leia smiled.

"I know."

Jyn Erso was even tenser now, looking just about ready to bolt, eyeing Leia's seated position for strategic advantages in a fight—but of course there were none. That was the point.

And it wasn't like Leia needed them, anyway.

It would look suspicious to bolt, and the last thing Erso or Gerrera needed was a chase through the streets drawing attention to their activities. So she stayed put.

Leia said, "Thank you for returning my ship after making your escape. I liked it a lot—we came here in it today, in fact."

Erso hissed out a breath. "What do you want?" she snapped.

"Amidala wants to re-establish contact with Gerrera," Leia said baldly. There was no one within listening distance, and she'd surreptitiously crushed the only bug in the vicinity.

"And she sent _you_? You're a long way from Coruscant, demon."

"If I go back to Coruscant, I get thrown into a cell beside my brother's and tortured right along with him," she said. She didn't mean it to come out quite so fiercely, but it did. "I can't imagine why Amidala sent me with the delegation, other than that she knows I'm highly motivated to gain resources and allies to help me mount a rescue attempt to retrieve him."

"You're going to rescue him?" Erso's eyebrows were high.

"I am."

She half laughed, half scoffed. "And how do you propose to do that?"

"With a lot of destruction and Imperial casualties," she smiled sweetly, "naturally."

"Naturally."

"And you want Saw's help to do that?" Her tone, in that perfect Coruscanti accent, couldn't have sounded more. . . amused. Sceptical.

It was promising.

Leia shrugged, dipping her fingers back into the stream. "I've heard that he's a fan of destruction and Imperial casualties," she said. She flicked the water at her, pointedly. "With the firepower to back it up."

Erso's eyes tracked the splashes on the floor. "You're Vader's daughter."

She swallowed every curse and epithet she wanted to voice in response to that, but just said, "Yes."

"You have his Jedi powers?"

Again, "Yes."

"You know how to wage a war? Both you and your brother?"

"We crushed your uprising at Kuat."

Erso blinked. "What?"

"That was us. We conducted the operation. We brought order. And we know _exactly _how to undo it. They taught us," she smiled, entirely unconcerned with how _easily _this sort of bloodlust came to her, "and now we'll turn it on them."

Erso was quiet for a moment, eyes narrowed. "Amidala accepted Vader's children into her Rebellion."

"She did."

She stood. "I'll tell Saw what you said today. If he wants to speak to you, or Amidala, he'll contact you. I won't promise anything."

Leia got to her feet as well. "I'm not expecting promises.

"Now I'll get out of here," she said, "before whatever contact you're waiting for shows up."

Erso narrowed her eyes again. Opened her mouth—

And Leia _gasped_ as cold flooded her, choked her, _crushed_ her.

Erso frowned. "Skywalker—?"

_Leia_. The voice was thunder against her mind.

"Vader's in the system," she got out. Her eyes were the size of dinner plates.

Erso scoffed. "He was here a few days ago. We weathered him then, we'll weather him again.

"He won't be looking for you." Leia grabbed her satchel, slung it over her shoulder. "He's after me. I—my friends—we have to go."

She paused to say, "Thank you."

Then she fled.

* * *

Her comlink was buzzing the whole run back. Everyone else was waiting when she finally rocketed up the _Star_'s ramp and burst into the cockpit, clinging to the back of the seat Ezra had taken behind the two pilots.

"It's about time you got here," Wedge snapped, "Vader's imposed a cordon around the planet!"

"This isn't the first cordon, nor will it be the last, that this ship has flown through," she snarled right back. "Unless it's your own piloting skills you're worried about?"

"I went to _Skystrike_."

"And my father is the best starpilot in the galaxy! If he's out here. . ."

There was a moment of stunned silence.

Before either of them could ask her to _explain_, she heard—

_Leia_.

She let go of Ezra's seat to grab at her head just as the ship lurched off the ground; she staggered back, then forward again.

_Leia, my daughter, let me in._

_"Trading ship, _Liberty's Death_, this is Naboo air traffic control. You have not been cleared for exit. There is now an Imperial cordon in place and any ship attempting to break it is required to present itself for inspection—"_

"Shut that thing up!" Kanan ordered.

_"—trading ship, _Liberty's Death_, do you—"_

Biggs whacked the switch.

The silence only made it worse when the _Executor _finally appeared beyond the viewport.

She was, Leia thought as a pit opened in her stomach, massive.

"Look at the size of that thing!"

The string of swearing was cut off by the comm chiming again.

"She's _hailing_ us?"

Leia ignored them, heart hammering in her throat. Her gaze was fixed on the bridge of that monstrous ship, the figure no doubt standing there like an avenging god, as he beat at her shields with a force that resonated throughout her entire consciousness.

_Leia, stop running and we can make this right._

Don't acknowledge him, don't acknowledge him, don't acknowledge him—

_"Trading ship, this is _Executor_. You will be tractored aboard momentarily on suspicion of Rebel ties and must submit your cargo and crew for inspection." _The voice was whiny, obnoxious—what had the admiral of Death Squadron been called again, the one her father hated? Oscar?

_"Move aside, Admiral,"_ came a dark voice.

Leia felt the floor vanish beneath her feet.

"Turn it off," she murmured, "turn it _off_—"

_"Leia,"_ her father said. _"Surrender, and I may allow your friends to live."_

A contingent of TIEs shot towards them; they banked hard to the right, desperately straining for that opening just out there beyond the viewport, beyond the _Executor_, among the stars—

_"Surrender, Leia. It is the only way."_

"Turn it _off_. . ." But they were too distracted, too focused on dodging and shooting back and casting desperate glances at the navicomputer as it made its calculations—

_"Surrender, Leia, and together we will be able to save Luke—"_

"Don't you _dare_ talk about him!"

Silence. In the cockpit, and over the comms.

"_Surrender_, you say? So what? So you can hang me over a chasm and cut off _my_ hand as well? Throw _me_ to Palpatine to have his way with as well?"

_"He—"_

"Is in _agony_," she spat. "I can sense it. Don't you _dare_ tell me you can't too."

No reply.

"And don't you _dare_, _Father_," she ignored the yelps of shock from the front of the cockpit, "_ever_ come near me again."

She strode forwards to mash the disconnect button. She revelled in the painful thump of hand against metal.

The navicomputer had finished.

"Punch it," she ordered. They did.

_Executor_ vanished.

* * *

Vader watched Leia disappear into the Force and did not notice the slowly growing circle of corpses around him.

Things were worse than he thought, he observed idly. If there was pain in his chest, he ignored it; it was just the suit malfunctioning, surely.

But things were much worse than he thought.

Leia was proving much more stubborn than expected. Much more _vocal_—everyone on the bridge had heard that rant, that _promise_, and that did not befit the future Vader wanted.

He would need to try a different tact.

He himself had never been one for subtlety. Never been one to run and hide like a coward.

But, as much as he balked at the idea. . . he knew one person, at least, who was.

* * *

"So. . ." Wedge said, leaning back in his chair, eyeing the door Leia had just stormed out of.

"I don't think we should ask," Biggs said.

"Yeah." Wedge turned back to the controls. "Maybe not."

* * *

Leia was having déjà vu, sitting here. In her room on her ship. Screaming and sobbing into her pillow again, on the way to the Rebel base.

It was then that the comlink started to buzz.

Leia ignored it at first, hoping it would just. . . vanish, and she wouldn't have to deal with it. It didn't.

It kept buzzing. Every buzz sounded more insistent than the last.

Finally she caved, rolled over and—realising it was in her bag, on the other side of the room—levitated it towards her. It landed in her hand; she shoved the button and ground out, "What."

The small figure projected crossed her arms and frowned at her. _"Kanan said you had a run-in with your father."_

"It was barely a run-in," she snapped. "He tried to catch us, we flew away. End of story."

_"You seem awfully shaken by it."_

"I'm _fine_," she enunciated, the words bitter on her tongue. "I'm a big girl, I can do things without my father—_or my mother_," she said pointedly,"—holding my hand."

Ahsoka sighed. _"Leia, I know this is hard for you—"_

"_Hard_? I can't _sleep_ without being reminded of what he's doing to my brother, of what _he's_ _letting_ _him do_ to my brother, and no one's twitched a _finger_ to change it! I'm starting to think—"

_"If you go in alone, you will be captured to. And then where will we be?"_

Leia grunted. "I can't just do _nothing_." Then she added acerbically, "I'm not like my mother."

"_She is _not_ doing nothing."_

Leia folded her arms across her chest, and ignored the part of her brain that told her that was an idiosyncrasy she shared with her father. "Then what _is_ she doing?"

Ahsoka was silent for a moment. Hesitant—

Leia scoffed and reached to disconnect the call—

_"She has an agent on the inside."_

Leia froze.

Ahsoka must have taken it as encouragement, because she continued, _"How do you think Visz got in? How do you think Erso and Andor got in? We have one more spy inside the Imperial Palace, and Padmé has been frantically trying to get in touch with them for over a week to try to see if they're in any position to get Luke out."_

Leia didn't know what to say. Except. . .

"Why didn't she tell me?"

Ahsoka sighed. _"I think Padmé's so used to playing her cards close to her chest," _she admitted, _"and holding even me and Sabé at arm's length by now, that she felt that it would be her fault if she told you, you got your hopes up, and had them crushed again."_

Leia. . . could relate to that.

_"She feels responsible for everything—it was nearly impossible to convince her to send you, of all people, on this mission—and she didn't want to be responsible for this as well."_

She shrugged. _"But that's just my take on it."_

Leia. . . decided she could unpack all of that later.

"There's a spy on the inside trying to get my brother out?" she asked instead. Hope, alien and sweet, swelled in her chest.

Ahsoka smiled.

_"Yes," _she said. _"There is."_


	30. Sixth Shadow

**I'd like to reiterate the warning for torture, and also one for gaslighting and similar manipulations for this chapter.**

* * *

The door slid open and Luke jerked awake, wincing in the harsh light. That leering face haunted his dreams so vividly nowadays, despite the rarity of its visits, it took him a moment to realise that no, he wasn't still asleep—and yes, this _was_ real.

_Be brave, Luke,_ said a whisper of wind. Luke wished Old Ben could be helpful for once.

"How are you feeling?" Palpatine asked. "Are you well rested?"

Luke shrugged noncommittally. It hurt.

Palpatine seated himself on the bunk next to him and rested a gentle hand on his knee. Slight shocks sparked against his skin. "Luke? Are you well rested?"

Luke said nothing again.

Palpatine got up with a sigh and a rustle of dark fabric. He walked around the room and spoke, half with his back turned to Luke.

Luke watched him, hyperaware of the throbbing in his muscles, the disc his brain spun on every time he got to his feet. Like this, he _could_ lunge at Palpatine's back and, if he could draw on the Force in time, snap his neck before this frail old man dropped the act and reminded him just how powerful he was, but. . .

He'd never succeed.

He knew that.

He would not give Palpatine the satisfaction of seeing him try.

"Luke, please answer me." He paused, half-turning back to him; for a moment his eyes looked more blue than gold, then it was gone.

Luke wouldn't fall for these manipulations. He swore it.

"Luke, " he said, turning back to him entirely, "answer me. Why can't you cooperate—engage in a reasonable discussion with me? I'm worried about you, my friend—about your sister, too."

Luke's eyebrows hiked up his face.

He croaked out, "Why would you care?"

"My boy." Palpatine brushed a hand over his cheek and sat down beside him again. Luke repressed a shiver. "Of course I care! You and Leia, your father. . . You're all like family to me."

"Then why did you stick a transmitter in my father's suit?" The words were out before he could stop them, and he winced.

The hand on his cheek tensed.

Then Palpatine laughed. "_What_ did I do?"

"You. . ." Luke's cheeks burned; he didn't even know why. "My father said—"

"Child, are you sure? You _know_ I would never."

He knew the opposite, he was pretty sure. But Palpatine sounded certain, and—

"Why would I plant one in his _suit_? He's had that since immediately after Mustafar, when Kenobi, as you know, diced your father and left him to burn to death. Vader had been the most loyal, promising apprentice I'd ever had—I'd not had you or Leia yet, of course," he patted Luke's knee with his free hand, "—so why would I ever want to alienate him in that way?"

That. . . had been one of the questions Luke had asked himself when his father had first told them.

"I— My _father said_—"

"Luke," Palpatine tutted, "you must be remembering wrong. How long have you been in here—a few days?" He placed his hand on his forehead to feel for the temperature—Luke was suddenly, violently transported back to Tatooine, to the last time someone had done that to him. Uncle Owen's anxious eyes.

His father had never had cause to do it, of course; his hands couldn't sense temperature well.

But. . .

"A _few days_?" It felt like. . .

"Yes?" Palpatine looked at him quizzically, and Luke _knew_ he couldn't trust anything he said, but that meant nothing when he was the only person other than his inner monologue to listen to. "Three days, if I'm thinking correctly—or two and a half, to be precise."

. . .weeks.

It felt like weeks.

Luke shook his head, trying desperately to count the meals he'd had. Dozens, at least. He thought. His head was spinning—

"No—"

"It has." Palpatine looked concerned. "Are you sure you're alright?"

Luke repeated, "Why do you care?"

"Why, my boy, we're family."

Luke shook his head. "No. No, we're not."

"Luke, your father is like a son to me. I— did I never tell you this story?"

Luke gave no response.

"I assume I didn't then. . . Well, I'm sure I _have_ told you the tale of my master, Darth Plagueis the Wise, and how he discovered the power to create life or cheat death itself?"

Despite himself, Luke nodded. He distantly remembered that, from his childhood—if only because of the bitterness that had always permeated his father's tone in the telling.

"He was my master. He taught me all he knew. And so, in my quest to create the perfect being, the perfect apprentice—a line of Force users who could ensure that a Sith dynasty could protect the stability and peace of the galaxy for millennia—I manipulated the midichlorians to produce a child inside a human woman. The child would be born to no sire, but he would be born of the Force itself—he would be powerful beyond imagining.

"That child was your father."

Luke blinked.

"And so, from a certain point of view," Palpatine's smile broadened, "I am your grandfather."

Luke frowned. He let it settle for a moment.

"So of course I care about you." He patted him on the shoulder. "We're family, are we not?"

Are we not?

Luke frowned.

Narrowed his eyes at him.

"Are we?" Luke challenged.

Palpatine froze. "Yes. . .?" he tried a small laugh. "Luke, I just—"

"What was my grandmother's name?"

The hand contracted on his knee; fingernails dug into the sore, tender flesh through Luke's ragged trousers. "What?"

"If you're my _grandfather_"—Luke rolled the word around his mouth like a vegetable he was trying to find a tactful way to spit out—"and care so much about my family, what was my grandmother's name?"

Palpatine scoffed. "Skywalker."

"Obviously." Luke kept his gaze on him. "Her first name?"

"Luke—"

"What was it," he leaned forwards, eyes daring, "_Grandpa_?"

It was a ridiculous test.

Even if she'd meant nothing to him—which Luke was already sure she did—there was every reason for Palpatine to remember her name.

Even if he'd not chosen her for the task specifically, if his dabbling had gone wrong and the Force just decided to give a miserable slave woman a ray of light in her bleak life, Palpatine had still spent years speaking to the woman's son. _Years_ being confided in about his fears for her.

He'd still spent years watching her grandchildren grow up.

And yet he said nothing.

Luke tilted his head to the side, narrowed his eyes in mocking challenge. Palpatine ground his teeth.

And still said nothing.

"Her name was Shmi Skywalker," Luke said quietly. "Her grave lay outside the homestead I lived in for seven years. She was brave and kind and strong, and every part of my father that is worth knowing came from her."

He spat on Palpatine's robes and took a vindictive pleasure in the way he recoiled in disgust.

"You are _nothing_ compared to her."

Palpatine's eyes were shadowed. "She was a slave. I am an emperor."

"She was brave. She was loving. She was _family_." He smiled bitterly. "She was everything you are not."

He lifted his chin.

"I will not tell you where Leia is. I will not rejoin you. I will _never_ stand by your side _again_, because you are a murderer, a tyrant and a liar, and I am _done_ listening to your poisonous words."

Luke had never before seen fury the likes of which eclipsed Palpatine's face. His eyes glowed.

"Then I will speak no longer," he said sweetly. "If you are so insistent on rejecting my offer on civil grounds, then we shall strip any civility away.

"No more breaks." His voice was mounting with a terrible, terrifying vigour. "Every day, you will feel the force of what it means to betray me. And in the end you will atone for your betrayal or die a traitor's death: alone, disgraced and in agony."

Luke refused to flinch.

"No more mercy for traitors and terrorists," Palpatine whispered. "From now on, you will face your justice."

"You don't know what mercy is," Luke told him. "And this is not justice."

Blue fire blinded him.

He was thrown back, pried open his eyes again to see that dark, hulking figure open the door and the crimson stains file in.

"Ensure he does not die, or take any permanent damage," Palpatine ordered. "Otherwise, do as you will with him."

The doors slammed shut, and they descended.

* * *

_You did well, Luke._

There were gentle hands around his ravaged arms and back—more gentle than he'd expected, than perhaps the person thought he deserved. After a moment, Luke registered that shadowy presence in the Force and recognised it.

_Mara_.

"What did you say?"

He winced—then winced harder when spasms shot through his cheeks at the motion. He tried to shake his head, and hastily aborted the motion.

"No, Skywalker, I know you said something." He hadn't meant to. "Repeat it. What did you say?"

He closed his eyes. Her visor was up, so he could see every minutia of her expression when she looked down at him, and he didn't want to.

". . .it sounded like _Mara_."

He didn't say anything.

She dragged him upright so she could get at the lacerations to his torso, swiping a cloth over them with disinfectant that stung. He hissed.

"Tell—"

He couldn't help but frown, despite the pain, at the hesitation in her voice.

"Tell me what my name was, Skywalker."

The words were an order, but. . . whispered. Their heads were close enough that the holocams couldn't even pick up on the motion of their lips.

He wasn't going to deny her.

"Mara Jade," he breathed, then slumped back against the bunk and let his eyes slide shut.

She made no verbal reaction. Just finished wiping the blood off the floor and his face, then marched out the door again with the same contained urgency she always used.

It was there, without even opening his eyes again, that Luke choked out, "Is it true?"

Silence in the cell.

Then, like Luke had expected— _Is what true?_

"_Don't_. Don't play devil's advocate, you— you said you wanted to be the voice of truth? Reason? _Sense_? Answer— Answer my question. Was anything he said there false?"

Another pregnant pause.

_You have been in here for much longer than two and a half days._

"I _know that_!" His throat muffled a scream. "What he said— about _family_—"

_None of us ever knew how Anakin ever came to exist, Luke. We thought it must be the will of the Force, the fulfilment of a prophecy. But. . ._

Luke choked on a sob. "I am not the son of darkness and. . . _lust for power_."

_No. You are the son of two good, clever people who loved each other very much, and loved you even more. And we do not know where your father came from, but I am certain of one thing: he was meant to be a blessing to this galaxy, not a curse._

_I couldn't save him from his fall. I never could protect the things Padmé loved most when she needed me to. But I can try to set things right—I can try to help you._

_Look at the door, Luke._

He lifted his chin. Only then did he notice the tear tracks on his face. "What about it?"

He could hear the smile in Ben's next words:

_It's unlocked_.

* * *

"_What_"—a burst of lightning fried her senses, momentarily shattered any semblance of rational thought and ripped a violent grunt from her vocal cords—"have you _done_?"

She tried to lift her chin and say, "Master, I—"

"You were foolish, incompetent and _stupid_," he answered his own question. "Or you were traitorous. _Are_ traitorous." His eyes narrowed, and she was suddenly, violently reminded of what he'd told her when he'd promoted her:

_I fear Lord Vader's children are hardly the only spies in this palace._

_I will need a capable Hand to hunt them down._

She shook her head—slowly, then more vehemently. Her neck screamed in protest. "No, Master, it wasn't me, I would never—"

"I am sure you wouldn't." But he still looked suspicious, still raised his hands for another onslaught—

"_Master_—"

The agony barrelled into her. Tears burned, but she bit them down; weakness would be scented and snuffed out. The Inquisitorius had taught her that.

She tried to feebly lift her head from the floor, then grimaced. Let herself fall back down. She waited for her fingers to stop twitching with the latent charges before she whispered, "I did it to break him."

His gaze snapped down to bore into hers. She did not waver; she did not flinch.

"What?"

It was all the permission she needed.

"I did it," she said slowly, "to break him. He was still resisting you, my master. He still held out a hope of rescue—of escape. He couldn't comprehend the position he was in. If he takes this chance—"

"He has already taken it. My pet is _gone_, because of your carelessness. And I cannot sense where he is."

She swallowed. "He'll never get past the security around your private cells, Master." It had frightened _her_ when he'd bequeathed her the honour of entering them, serving in them; to an agonised boy, half-dead and dazed, escape from the cell block would be as impossible as escape from a black hole. "And when he fails, when he is more cognizant of your offer and the situation he finds himself in, he will come to accept it."

"My offer or the situation?" he sneered.

She said nothing. Fear and pain welled up inside her; she let it, her Force presence growing darker, richer. Her master lapped it up.

It meant he couldn't taste the lies in it.

"You will never again do such a thing without express permission," he ordered. An agonising shock accompanied it for effect. "If he escapes, your life is forfeit."

"Yes, Master."

"Now get out of my sight." He turned away, striding back up to his throne. She sensed him cast out for senses, looking for a supernova that had vanished into the Force-suppressant nature of the cells' perimeter.

She bowed her head again.

_Relief_ shattered her concentration and some of it slipped out; she hoped he just thought that it was relief over being allowed to live. But what she was, _actually_ was. . .

She was immensely glad he hadn't read her mind.

Hadn't heard the words that thundered in it, no matter how hard she tried to suppress them. The vulnerabilities they invoked.

_I was going to step forward, you know. Whether Leia ordered me otherwise or not, I was about to step forward. I signed up willingly to put myself in danger, not you. Or anyone else_

But that wasn't even the worst of it.

If he found out her obsession with what Skywalker had told her, right before she'd. . . _slipped up_, she would be thoroughly, royally, doomed.

Even so.

Mara Jade took a deep breath and strode out of the throne room.

* * *

It hadn't been that hard for Luke to escape the cell block.

He still wasn't sure why—whether it had been negligence, if Mara had something to do with it, or if he just had _obscenely_ good luck. He hoped it was the latter; he'd need it, if he wanted to get out of the Palace, out of Imperial City, off-planet, and then to hyperspace.

And _then_ to find Leia.

He'd need more luck than there was in the galaxy for that.

But he was going to try anyway. He had to. So he kept moving.

Upon exiting the cell, unlocked or not, there had been two red guards standing outside it. He'd stared at them for one precious half-second, then legged it.

The corridors were like a maze—he'd never been down to Palpatine's private dungeons before, he didn't know the layout, and it was showing. Every twist and turn just showed more and more cells, more and more cells, more and more cells—

He pivoted on his foot to slam the heel of his hand into the controls for one of the blast doors. It closed slowly, but he hit the _lock_ button and begged it would buy him time.

Shouts—up ahead. His heart nearly stopped when two more figures in those hated red robes appeared and he scurried forward to hit close and lock on _those_ blast doors as well, heart hammering like the drums in the Imperial anthem on Empire Day.

He stared between them. The screech of Force pikes could be heard.

Tears swam in his eyes. There was nothing to do, nothing he could do, he was trapped and he was going to _die_ here, and—

The Force was gone.

It had vanished the moment he stepped into the corridor—the very stones against his bare feet seemed to repel it, and that warm, bright, mystical _power_ that always suffused his entire being was _gone_. He couldn't sense anything. He was cold and trembling and _weak_ without it.

Because Palpatine needed the Force to electrocute dissidents in the cells themselves, because he need it to tell truth from lies, but _they_ needed it to escape so if they got this far—

If they managed to leave the pathetic, _isolated_ little bubble of brightness he left them each wallowing in, then built the corridors out of a stone that cancelled or dampened the Force so they couldn't run or hope or hide—

No.

No. Luke was smart—with or without the Force. He was strong, with or without the Force.

He remembered Tatooine—his aunt and uncle hadn't had it, and yet they'd survived in one of the harshest planets to exist. They'd survived without it. So could he.

His frantically roving gaze flicked up—half in prayer—when the metal blast doors bucked like they were about to slide open, and—

Fell on the air vent just above his head.

Luke thought of all the reports he'd read about Phoenix Squadron, the Spectres, the _Ghost_ crew. He thought of Ezra Bridger, a boy almost exactly as old as him, Force-sensitive, raised on a different side of the war.

He wondered if Leia was with him, wherever she was.

He had no tools with which to pry open the vent, no Force with which to. . . well, force it open. He had only his fingernails and his desperation—and the sound of the doors grinding open, inch by painstaking inch.

He made do.

* * *

The stone that cancelled the Force had its advantages to Luke, as well.

It was softer than any stone a prison was built out of had the right to be—which, albeit, meant it crumbled a lot under his hands and feet once he was in the vents, and got all in his lungs; he coughed a lot, and hoped no one could hear him.

But he managed to escape. He'd _managed to escape_.

And now, completely cut off from the Force. . . none of them—Palpatine, the Inquisitors—could track him.

Or his father.

If he was still on planet. If he hadn't left his son to unimaginable torment and stuck around to watch him undergo it—to help recapture him if he tried to escape it.

Luke choked on a sob.

He followed the vents for as long as he could, taking arbitrary twists and turns, wherever they might lead him. At one point the air stopped smelling dry and filtered, and more. . . rotten. Damp. Left to fester.

Luke's heart soared.

_The Jedi Temple_.

The next grate he clambered over, he peered down into complete darkness. The Force whispered at the back of his mind again—he threw up shields before Palpatine got lock onto him—and he laughed in sheer _delight_.

He'd be safe here. He'd be safe, he'd be safe, the shadows had always been the twins' playmates—

A few bangs, a strategic press of his newly rediscovered power, and he was tumbling out of the grates, to land on the hard floor.

That was where he really got in trouble.

He fell strangely—blinded and dizzy and, quite frankly, _out of it_ as he was—and the crack that sounded from his right ankle could not sound more like a death knell.

"No," he muttered, gritting his teeth at the sight of it. Definitely sprained, or twisted; possibly broken. "_No_."

It _hurt_.

No more than anything else hurt right now—it wasn't like any of the bacta patches and disinfectant Mara had so generously applied would _benefit_ from a crawl through the ventilation systems, and it _screamed_ with every movement he made—but. . .

He'd been _so close_.

He'd been so close, and—

And an injured ankle wasn't going to stop him now.

He gritted his teeth again. Felt along the floor in the pitch dark for the wall, and braced himself against it.

And _pushed_.

He staggered onto his feet, the bones in his foot grinding oddly. He pushed aside the pain—if he tried to used it to connect to the Force, Palpatine would find him all the quicker, and it would be an annoyance otherwise—and stumbled onwards.

* * *

He did not get far.

He fell more than he advanced, scratches and grazes and bruises aggravating the mess of injuries already masquerading as his body, a little of the fight flooding out of him with every _oomph_ as he did.

He shoved himself back to his feet, ignoring the tears that now freely tracked through the dust on his face, and kept going.

The bacta patches had long since peeled off, fluttering down behind him like a bloody trail of breadcrumbs pointing exactly where he went. He couldn't bring himself to care.

He couldn't navigate this place without a glowrod, injured or not. He was probably going to die here anyway; die, that is, or get dragged back to Palpatine's tender care—

Footsteps.

His head whipped round; it hurt in the way that the ripple from a stone toss disturbs a raging sea. There, further ahead in the lightless corridor: white light, growing closer, and larger. Closer, and larger, and _brighter_.

He looked around for somewhere to hide—

"Skywalker?"

He froze.

Not just at the use of the name—the name he hadn't heard _anyone_ here except Mara use—but. . . also at the voice.

Also at the figure that emerged from the shadows. Colourless hair drawn back in the tightest bun Luke had ever seen someone tie, bony hand clenched urgently around the glowrod, long, neat blue robes brushing and dirtied by the detritus on the ground.

Ice-chip eyes met his.

He said, "_Horada_?"


	31. Shatterpoint Six

The trip from Naboo to Dantooine was, by the route they were taking, five or six days. On the second day, Padmé contacted her.

She. . . frowned, when she received the comm. Her mother had been. . . perfectly cordial, so far, and she'd hugged her tightly and said exactly what Leia had needed to hear the times Leia had seen her, but leading a Rebellion was busy work. She. . . hadn't really had time to talk to her regularly, or in depth, yet; it was always Ahsoka she dealt with, Ahsoka who woke her whenever her nightmares and her screams woke half the base, who explained to her what tasks needed to be done and where to go.

She wasn't sure if it was because Ahsoka was Force-sensitive where Padmé was not, or something else.

The projection winked into existence. Padmé's head and shoulders were all it showed, but they were enough. Leia picked the handheld device up from her bed and uncrossed her legs, leaving the half-finished plait she'd been working on draped over her shoulder.

". . .Mother?" she asked, the word sounding foreign on her tongue. But the way Padmé. . . _smiled_, suddenly, when she heard it, she supposed, ignoring the warmth in her own chest, made up for it.

_"Leia,"_ she greeted.

"What's the occasion?"

She frowned tightly, her shoulders hunching over as they tensed ever so slightly. _"Do I need an occasion to check on my daughter? Especially after I heard what happened with A— Vader."_

Leia decided not to comment on her slip.

"You haven't struck up many conversations with me before now," she pointed out, curling in on herself as well, slightly. She drew one leg back up onto the bed and bent it, heel to her thigh. "I didn't think—"

_"Oh."_ Her eyes went wide. _"Oh, Leia, sweetheart. . ."_

She grimaced.

_"I. . . was trying to give you space. I was busy and I thought you'd be angry over. . . Tatooine, and I thought I'd wait for you to come to me. I can—"_

"It's alright. If I'd just focused on doing what needed to be done, I could've got through it a lot faster—"

_"Leia." _Her mother's tone brooked no argument. _"You are far too much like me." _That gave Leia an odd feeling—she wasn't sure if she wanted to take that as a compliment or an insult. _"Putting yourself before your duties isn't selfish, it just makes sense—they can't be carried out if there's no self _to_ carry them out. I know you want to retreat into yourself and plot what you're going to do next, but talk to people. Cooperate with people. It'll be much, much better for you all around."_

Leia swallowed. "I guess. . ."

Padmé smiled at her again.

". . .I'll keep it in mind," she concluded, a lump in her throat. "If you want."

_"I do."_ There was a chiming noise behind her; Padmé turned to look at something the holo didn't pick up, then grimaced. _"Now, not to ruin the moment, but I wanted to check up on you. . . and also to tell you, there's someone contacting me now who wants to speak to you."_

Leia frowned. "Who—"

Padmé's image vanished and was replaced.

Leia recognised him instantly.

Dark skin more scarred that not, greying dark hair, and a life support suit extending up to his neck that attested to exactly how many injuries he'd received in his two decades of war and terror. (It reminded her of her father more than she cared to admit.)

"Saw Gerrera," she greeted.

_"Leia Skywalker,"_ he replied. His voice rasped. _"Your father was quite the celebrity in his day."_

"He still is," she shot back, "for all the wrong reasons."

_"Heh. Your mother, too."_

Leia glanced to the left, where Padmé's image had slid off to. She didn't know how to take that.

"What do you want?"

His head moved back, away from the comlink on his end._ "Jyn just put in quite the favourable word for you. I hear you want help rescuing your brother."_

"And you're offering it?"

_"Depends. I don't know if I can trust you or not."_

"You shouldn't," she said baldly. Her anger slipped into her voice, but it was more like a bitterness—at the galaxy, at her family, but most of all at herself. "I'm a recent Imperial defector, after all, seeking to rescue another recent Imperial defector. You'd be a fool to trust me."

_"Especially after what you and your brother did at Kuat."_

That bitterness roared up into a flame—but not at herself. Because she'd found it far too easy to push aside, to forget, earlier, but. . .

They were trying to ally with Saw Gerrera.

The person who didn't flinch at killing civilians just to strike at a government he hated, in the name of what was good and righteous. In the name of _justice_.

And she knew, logically, that Luke would be disappointed in her for thinking what she was thinking right now.

But the flame inside her burned, and the dark side nipped at her heels, and she was her father's daughter.

_If needs must._

The Empire had stolen her brother. It had stolen _everything_.

"I won't apologise for being effective," she said. "Only for stopping you, instead of helping burn those Imperial resources to the ground."

She thought she heard a quiet gasp in the background at the murder in her voice, but her eyes were fixed on Gerrera.

He laughed. _"'Effective.' You aren't one for false modesty."_

"I just know what I'm good at."

He sucked in a sharp breath.

Stiffened.

He was staring, she realised after a moment, before he shook himself.

_"Heh. That you do."_ There was a tight edge to his voice. _"You say you want to rescue your brother?"_

"I _will_ rescue my brother."

A pregnant pause.

_"I know what it's like,"_ he said finally, _"to lose a sibling to tyranny."_

Her eyebrows shot up. Of all things, she had not been expecting. . . this.

Vulnerability.

_"I will assign some resources to help you, Skywalker,"_ he promised. _"Just promise me one thing."_

She crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes. "What?"

_"Turn that effectiveness on the Empire,"_ he said. _"Make them burn."_

She smirked.

Nothing would delight her more.

* * *

"Come on, Skywalker," Horada grunted, his arm slung around her shoulders as they staggered onwards. "Just a little bit further."

He shook his head. They paused for breath and he unwittingly leaned on her a little more than before; she stumbled, and they both teetered for a moment to avoid the fall.

"Are you ready to go again, Skywalker?"

"Feel free to call me Luke," he panted, but nodded.

She took his weight again and they limped forward, trying desperately not to put too much weight on his broken ankle. She scoffed.

"I've called you _boy_ for several months to avoid using your first name. Now you finally deign to have a last name, you are _not_ going to take this from me."

He laughed, despite himself. "Fair enough."

"Just a little further, Skywalker," she coaxed again, voice softening. He shuddered, suddenly hyperaware of the blood soaking him—wounds he'd reopened—and the pain that permeated every cell like a klaxon blare, his trembling muscles, his pounding head—

"_Just_," she grunted, "a _little_. . . _further_. . ."

Then there was a door on the left and Horada was ushering him towards it.

"There," she whispered. "Here we are."

He staggered in.

The first thing he noticed was that it was. . . clean. There were small lamps and lights scattered around the room, windows—windows!—with the shutters drawn down, and. . .

He nearly cried when he saw them.

Beds.

"This was the old infirmary, I believe," Horada murmured. "Of the Jedi Temple, that is. My father was a worker in the Temple, he used to be responsible for cleaning here, he said the spirits of the Jedi healers would never forgive him if he let it fall to ruin. . ."

She helped him stagger to one of the beds and he collapsed onto it, once again nearly crying at the feeling of something. . . _soft_. . . underneath him.

Of something _soft_ at all.

"How. . .?"

She smiled a little to herself, brushed some of the outside dust from her robes, and strode over to one of the cabinets—a dark, reddish wood. Even that seemed polished and well maintained.

"You and your sister aren't the only ones who've been sneaking down here the past few years, Skywalker," she said, almost amiably. "The amount of times I had to hide in the most ignoble positions lest some curious ten year old betray me. . . Let's say I was a little bitter when I found out I had to entertain _you_ as a library volunteer."

"You weren't great at hiding it," he admitted, lying back on the bed. "I figured it was something to do with—"

"Don't! Don't lie back. Let's get you out of those filthy clothes, first. Wash off, apply bacta, and _then_ you can sleep." She turned, rising back to her feet and striding back over with her hands full of the same sort of supplies Mara had had. "Though Force knows you must need it."

Luke nodded, and groaned as he bent over to tug at his boots.

"Don't!" She was in his face in a moment, batting his hands away. "Those boots look pretty stiff, though Force knows how long you've been wearing them"—since his capture, along with the rest of his clothes, thought considering her own clothes were smeared with his blood and dirt and sweat, he didn't think she'd want to hear any of that—"so it might be best to leave them on for now."

She dumped most of the supplies on the table beside him. "Take off your shirt, we need to clean you off and see to some of those injuries." She winced when he complied, and she saw them. "Ouch."

"Yeah, I can't say they feel that great either."

She swatted his shoulder. "Quiet, boy. I'm trying to concentrate." She swiped the damp cloth to and fro over his shoulder, gently.

He hissed with every stroke.

"Oh, for stars' sake. . ." She muttered. "You know, my family's from Alderaan."

He blinked in surprise, but was grateful for the distraction. He desperately needed it. "Really?"

"Yes. My father was from Alderaan, then moved to Coruscant when he was in his early twenties. Fell in love with the place—the skyscrapers, the opportunities—"

"The Jedi?"

"Yes," she conceded. She sounded oddly pensive. "And the Jedi. He never left. He met my mother, and had me. He stayed working on this temple until he died ten years ago; I've been looking after it since."

That. . . felt mournful. Felt like a far too personal subject as well, so Luke asked, "Did he ever take you to see Alderaan?"

She snorted. "No. He never liked Alderaan anyway—too peaceful. He needed to be somewhere he could get caught up in the rush of it all. But I've been there." She switched out the damp cloth for the disinfectant. "My daughter moved there for university when she was eighteen and never left. She met her best friends there, met her wife there, got their pet tooka. . . They even had a child recently. A beautiful little girl, with my daughter's eyes and my daughter-in-law's nose."

"What's her name?"

"Clara. I'm told she's a little menace, screams all night. She must get it from her mother."

Luke laughed—then hissed as she slapped a bacta patch on him, then laughed again.

"I'll probably go and join them, once we get out of here," she mused. She frowned at the larger wounds, but there wasn't much she could do beyond clean them and apply bacta, so she just grimaced extra vehemently and got to it.

"You're not going back to the Archives?"

"After this?" She snorted. "No. Palpatine will know I'm a traitor. But I'm alright with that. My father's labour of love," she gestured around the room, "has saved one more patient. I'm sure the spirits of the Jedi healers will be satisfied."

Luke swallowed.

"I'm sorry to be uprooting you from your life."

Her hands stilled.

She glanced at his face briefly, as if to work out if he was joking or not, and started when she realised he was in earnest. She continued to clean and dress the wounds.

"You're a kid, Luke," she said firmly. "It's not _my_ life that's been uprooted the most. I'm sorry I couldn't get you out of that horrible environment sooner."

He bent his head so she didn't see the tears in his eyes.

She finished her treatment, then wandered back over to another cupboard. This time, she drew out large swathes of fabric.

They almost looked like—

"Jedi robes," she said shortly, tossing them over him. "They'll be too big, and inconvenient, and not ideal, but at least they're cleaner than. . . those." She wrinkled her nose at his tattered clothes, caked in blood and dust.

He clutched them tightly. "Thank you," he said. "Thank you so much."

She paused. . . then smiled at him.

"You're welcome," she said. "Now get some rest."

* * *

_"So, Leia,"_ Padmé said carefully, the moment Gerrera vanished and she was back on the channel. _"What do you think of him?"_

"Of Gerrera?"

_"Yes."_

Leia narrowed her eyes. "He could be useful," she said. If Padmé wanted to be vague and. . . _diplomatic_, two could play at that game. "He has many resources, and unity would only help the greater Rebellion—could only help _Luke_," she said pointedly. "Isn't that what you're after?" _Why you made me talk to him? _she added in her head.

Padmé pursed her lips. _"You know there was a reason we split from him to begin with."_

"Yes. And desperate times call for desperate measures, do they not? You're all Rebels."

_"Considering that you used to follow the Empire's habit of using Saw's activities to tar the Rebellion as a whole," _Padmé countered, _"I would think you would understand my reluctance here."_

She crossed her arms. "What are you saying? That I shouldn't accept his help, on a few _moral qualms_? Luke is—"

_"I know, Leia."_ Padmé sounded tired. _"And I hate it, and I empathise with the need to do anything to change it. But the ends do not justify the means. That's your father's way of thinking."_

She clenched her fists. "Don't you _dare_ compare me to him—"

_"I will compare you to him. You are similar; that is not necessarily a bad thing, but Anakin was always more. . . quick to abandon ideals,"_ she said carefully, _"in the face of a loved one's pain."_

"I think you'll find that torching everything Palpatine stands for is perfectly in line with my morals, thank you very much—"

_"I heard your conversation with Saw,"_ she interrupted. _"You shouldn't take such pleasure in destruction, Leia. It's a vicious circle."_

"It's what they _deserve_."

_"It's _terrorism_."_

"I used to call your activities that," she snapped. "I suppose it's all the Jedi 'certain point of view' nonsense?"

_"In a way."_ Padmé sounded _very_ tired. _"But I know you still practice the dark side—and before you interrupt, I know that I am not Force-sensitive, and therefore am not an expert on this. But Ahsoka tells me, Kanan tells me, that they are worried about you. The dark side will eat you alive."_

"It will give me the strength to save Luke!"

_"But at what cost?"_ Padmé insisted. _"Once you've wallowed in darkness, once you've burned the galaxy to ashes to rescue him, you will have to find out if that was really what Luke wanted—"_

"Don't you _dare_!" Her anger was a living being in her chest; the temperature dropped sharply; she sensed the Jedi a few rooms away shift uncomfortably. "Don't you _dare_ assume _anything_ about Luke!"

_"Leia—"_

"You weren't there!" she shouted. "You _left_, you _abandoned us_! You do _not_ get to tell me what to do about my brother, you do _not_ get to compare me to my father, and you do not get to act like_— _like—"

_"Like your mother?" _Padmé asked quietly.

Leia nodded, realising there were hot tears on her face. "Yes."

Padmé looked hurt. Leia didn't care.

_"Alright," _her mother said. _"We will accept Saw's help if we need it, but just. . . promise me you'll think about it?"_

Leia grunted.

_"Alright. But we might not even need it. That was the good news I meant to mention earlier."_

Despite the fury that still ebbed and swelled, Leia leaned forward. Hope was the sweetest emotion she'd felt all day.

_"Ahsoka told you I had a spy,"_ Padmé said. _"Well, she's got Luke. If all goes well. . ._

_"He'll be on his way to Dantooine in a few hours."_

* * *

He slept like he'd been hit by a stun bolt the moment his head hit the pillow, and when he woke up, he felt less like death itself.

The old infirmary was empty save for him, so he took the chance to look around. The high ceiling arched above him and Luke found himself smiling at some of the murals that embellished the curves, of Jedi younglings of all species and age, crudely drawn lightsabers, messages and blessings of peace in nearly every written language he knew of. . .

He closed his eyes and stretched out with his feelings.

The Force hummed here, rather than muttered; it was significantly lighter than the rest of the Temple, corrupted and rotting in misery as it had been. It calmed him, somewhat—he instinctually let go of anger, fear, hate, and it made some knot in his chest loosen and his surroundings warm. He stretched out further—

To sense another presence scouring the area like a dark searchlight.

He shot up his shields immediately.

"Good morning," Horada greeted, striding into the room. "Rise and shine."

Luke frowned—he realised that, underground as he had been, he had no idea of the time. "Morning?"

"It's eleven. You escaped at around one in the morning last night."

He took in a breath. She brandished a fresh set of Jedi robes at him and he took them automatically. "Thank you."

"Don't mention it. Now, Amidala has arranged for there to be a ship waiting for us just on the outskirts of Imperial City, if we can get to it before noon. I'm not expected to show up for my shift in the Archives until two, so my absence will go unnoticed until it's too late. But time is of the essence. Do you feel ready to go?"

As if there was any chance he was going to stay, even if he felt like he'd run through all the hells barefoot. "Yes." He pulled himself to his feet and bit back a cry when he put weight on his right foot again.

Right.

He'd forgotten about that.

"Easy, there," Horada caught him before he toppled again, and Luke grimaced as he was lowered back onto the bed. His ankle looked to have swollen to the size of a meiloorun. "Don't take things too rough. I hid a speeder just where the corridor leading out from here meets the airways; we can get out of Imperial City reasonably quickly."

"If we can get to the speeder," Luke murmured.

". . .yes," Horada conceded, "if we can get to the speeder. But it will be fine." Her tone was firm, but in an. . . _unconvincing_. . . way. "_We'll_ be fine. Now come on, Skywalker." She offered him her arm. "Let's move out."

He tried to smile, but took her arm and hauled himself upright.

And, like that, they limped out of the infirmary.

"You're sure you know the way?" he murmured. All the poorly-lit (or completely dark) corridors looked the same, especially in only the light of Horada's glowrod. There were still scorch marks on the walls from the Purges twenty years earlier; he'd spent most of his childhood here, but it was. . . unnerving.

It didn't help that the scent of charred flesh still lingered, either.

"I'm certain, Skywalker," she said—a bit snappishly, he thought, but it wasn't like she was the only one on edge. "I've been traversing these corridors for decades, I know—"

"Someone's coming."

Her face was paler than a ghost's in this light. "_What_?"

A sound skittered down the corridor towards them.

Ice began to crystallise on the air.

"Inquisitors," he whispered.

A shudder of warning was all he got. He moved, shoving down the spike of pain from his ankle and trying not to let it bleed into the Force, and grabbed Horada, stifling her small cry. He yanked them both into a side door and had barely shut off her glowrod or pulled the door to before the footsteps came.

They crawled down the corridor at an agonising pace. They were accompanied by the reverberations of sabers.

"I heard something," rasped a voice.

"It was your imagination," came another, both slightly off in tone—Inquisitors, then, speaking through their helmets.

"If the brat came down here, there'd be a trail of blood, like there was in the air vents."

"Unless there was someone who helped him," countered the other. "If _Vader's_ spawn can be traitors, anyone can. If someone got him medical supplies—"

"If someone got him medical supplies, then their fate will make his look _merciful_," spat a third voice. Luke stiffened, eyes going wide.

Mara.

"Oh, don't be so crude," said the second voice. "I'm sure Master will have a. . . _chat_ with them, that's all."

The laughter was the cruellest, most excruciating thing he'd ever listened to. He glanced down when he realised he was squeezing Horada tightly; she was holding him just as close.

Her eyes were scrunched shut and she stank of terror.

"Whoever they are, they're close," said the first voice. They seemed to revel in it. "I can feel their fear."

Horada whimpered.

"What was that?"

Tears tracked down her cheeks; they dampened Luke's shoulder and stung some of the old wounds that had opened in his panic. He squeezed her tighter. Wrapped shields around them both.

_We are not here_, he said—_begged_. _We do not exist. We are a wall; a stone; a whisper on the breeze._

"As the Eighth Sister said," Mara said coldly. "It was your imagination. This place feels strange in the Force, you know that. If you want to actually succeed for once, Eleventh Brother, perhaps you should stop jumping at shadows." Her tone turned mocking. "Or ghosts."

Luke shut his eyes.

That was it.

_We are living on a planet of ghosts._

_Ghosts_.

"You do not give me orders, Sixth Sister—"

"Ben?"

"_Emperor's Hand_—" Mara corrected pointedly.

"Ben," Luke muttered. "Ben, hear me—"

The Eighth Sister said, "I thought I _did_ hear something there—"

"_Ben_. . ."

"—and I believe I _do_ give you orders, Eleven. Unless you are so incompetent that you have already forgotten what our master said?"

"It's not me who forgets orders," the Eleventh Brother growled. "Or my place."

Mara said, "Then act like it."

And then there were footsteps.

Not even footsteps—a loud clattering, debris scattering across the floor, and vibrations that might have been distant cursing.

Luke clenched his eyes shut.

"What was that?"

"Was that them?"

Mara paused.

"The others are searching the south wing of this stars-forsaken temple," she said. "That must be them. Split up, pen them in."

No reply.

"Are we clear?"

Low murmuring, then—

"Are. We. Clear?"

A sigh that somehow sounded more like a growl. "Yes, Hand."

"Then get out of my sight."

The footsteps dispersed.

Luke whispered, "Thank you, Ben."

He slowly, ever so slowly, detached himself from Horada's arm. She was shaking, enough that he was the one supporting her for the first few steps down the corridor, before she regained her wits. He didn't comment on it.

He was, in fact, unbelievably impressed by how brave she was being.

"Let's go," he said. Neither of them commented on the fact that he hadn't stopped trembling.

He stayed painfully alert the whole way there. Thankfully, if all the other Inquisitors were in the south wing as Mara had said, they might be able to make it to the west. . . but that had been too close. Ben could lead them on a wild galaar chase all he wanted, but he could only manifest for so long; at one point they'd be coming.

"What time is it?" he murmured. Horada glanced at the chrono on her wrist.

"Eleven forty," she whispered back.

Twenty minutes.

"How long 'til the speeder?"

She ran the calculations. "Should be five. No more."

He didn't miss the _should be_.

He let out a breath. "Let's go, then."

The next five minutes lasted an eternity.

Pausing and wishing he never had to breathe again. . . creeping forward, cringing at every audible footfall, every twitch of stone, every hitch of breath. . . But they made it.

Well.

They nearly made it.

They could see the light. At the end of the corridor. It was going to open out onto a disused landing platform, with a speeder piled under a bunch of rusting metal slates and poles, and then they were going to clear them all off, to hell with the noise, and shoot off into the busy midday traffic before the Inquisitors could converge on them like a swarm of furious klikniks—

Luke stretched out, very briefly, one last time to check that all the Inquisitors were far away enough for that to be _possible_—

—and one of them sensed him.

The message was spread instantaneously; one heartbeat later and there were a dozen death-cold stares zeroing in on his location; one heartbeat more and a much colder, much more _intense_ stare was fixed on him, from higher up—

His breath froze in his throat.

"Go," he said. They hobbled forwards as fast as possible. "Go, go, go—"

There was an almighty _lurch_ as the dark side flooded the area from a distance. Palpatine fed his anger through the air, through the walls; Luke instinctively shielded against it. But when Palpatine squeezed and there was a _crack_, the walls shuddered and began to collapse around them, and he lit up like an Empire Day firework to toss a particularly large chunk of rock away from Horada's head—

And the corridor collapsed in front of them.

Half-collapsed. It was still passable, he saw with pure, unfiltered relief, but difficult, and—

And they had to go one at a time.

He gave Horada a push. "Go. Go, I'll be right behind you."

He'd been here before.

He knew that. He could practically hear Leia's screams on the wind again, mingling with the groan and crunch of more and more rocks raining down. He caught them before they could touch her—dark presences latched onto his hungrily, but he shook it off—and shouted again, "Go!"

"You have to follow!" she shot back.

But there was no changing it now. She was clear of the blockage, but Luke staggered forward—

And a massive slab of rock smacked him in the side.

He went down hard, vision blooming red, blood filling his mouth. There was a _crack_—several, in fact. In his ribs, in his leg—

His _leg_—

He couldn't help it: he screamed.

It echoed.

He summoned every inch of the Force he could get his hands on and tossed the rock off, but when he looked up he knew it was too late.

Great chunks of the ceiling had piled in the corridor, blocking it from wall to wall. He eyed the gap at the top, wondering if he could climb, it—

Then he shifted, and the agony in his leg nearly made him black out.

He staggered to his feet anyway, ignoring how it _screamed_, and did his best to hop over to the blockage. His heart was beating like a caged bird its wings, the ringing in his ears was trilling just as loudly; he could hear the Inquisitors' shouts and sabers and sprinting as they neared.

The sound of the lightsabers broke him out of it.

"No," he said to himself, seizing a rock and hurling it aside. He could hear Horada scrabbling on the other side; he tried again, carving deep grazes in his palms, before he sagged against the rock and sobbed, "_No. . ._"

A grinding shift, then light bled through a hole—a tiny hole, the size of his fist. One of Horada's ice-pale eyes appeared in it.

"Don't give up, Skywalker," she said, "we can still—"

"No," he said, and shook with the _despair _of it all. "We can't."

Tears freely wet his cheeks and he didn't care who saw anymore. He beat one fist against the rock; the other was stuffed into his mouth to stifle his scream.

"Yes we _can_, don't give up—"

"You have to go."

She wasted precious time staring at him.

"_No_," she finally got out. "No, _Luke_—"

"You have to go," he begged. "Go. Get out, before the Inquisitors catch you. Go to Alderaan, see your daughter, make sure you meet Clara, make sure—" He sobbed.

He tried to reach for that elusive, peaceful light he'd found in the infirmary, but it evaded his touch. There was no light here.

The shadows were coming for him, and they did not want to play.

He shook his head. "Make sure she knows her grandmother," he said, "because Force knows I wish I had."

"_Luke_—"

"And tell my sister. . ." He wept more, heavier, _harder_ at the thought of Leia, strong, terrifying Leia, who'd scream and rage and _break_— "Tell her. . ."

He swallowed. Shook his head. "'Likewise,'" he whispered hoarsely.

Horada didn't question it. "I will," she promised. "Luke. . ."

"Go. Go to Alderaan. Maybe I'll come meet you there when I get out," he said humourlessly.

"I. . ." She was glancing behind her now—at the freedom that had been so close.

_So, so close_.

"Thank you for everything," he whispered, then sagged back down to the floor.

He heard her hesitate, then bolt when the footsteps continued to grow closer. He heard the clatter of metal as she pulled the speeder from its hiding place and fled.

Only once the roar of the engines had faded did he allow himself to scream.

And he _screamed_.

Long. Loud. Every blasted ounce of desperation and terror and _foolish, foolish hope_ ejected from his throat. He pounded his fist against the rock until that cracked too; blood ran freely. Everything was red and black and pain.

He was half-unconscious with the heady mix of it all when they got to him.

* * *

When Leia landed on Dantooine to the sight of an unfamiliar ship but without the explosive sense of her brother in the Force, she knew something was wrong.

Hope turned to ash in her mouth.

Everyone noticed that something was wrong with her when she started fidgeting, standing, pacing, as they landed, but only Kanan cast her a glance. When the ramp was down, she was down it before she'd even finished the thought—before it had even finished _lowering_.

Padmé, Ahsoka, and a third familiar face were waiting for her on the landing pad.

She skidded to a halt in front of them.

"Horada," she greeted, a little stiffly. Her eyes swept the buildings behind them, in case the Force could be lying, in case her brother was hiding and waiting to jump out on her, and her heart beat in her throat—

"Skywalker," Horada replied, gentler than Leia had ever heard her, but. . . pained.

So, so pained.

"Where—" Her voice broke. She was loosely aware of the others, finally disembarked, hovering awkwardly behind her. She ignored them. "Where's my brother?"

No one replied.

Then Horada said, "He told me to tell you. . ." She hesitated. "'Likewise.'"

The word dropped like a stone in her gut. _Likewise_.

It dropped like a stone into a glass, and all the displaced water flooded out of her in tears. _Likewise_.

_I'm on _your _side. I don't care which side that is._

She pressed her hand to her mouth. _Likewise._

She closed her eyes. Reached out to him, desperately, in an almost instinctual move, and saw—

_—a cell, darker than the standard Imperial white, and a wrinkled face contorted in fury above her, a gnarled finger under her chin._

_"I heard you've been on quite the adventure, Luke," Palpatine said, gaze tracing the bloody Jedi robes, the bloody leg, _so much blood_— "And it doesn't seem to have done you any good."_

_She swallowed. Everything _hurt_._

_"And yet, I'm not sure that was sufficient for you to have learnt your lesson, was it, my boy?"_

_She didn't reply._

_"_Was it_?"_

_She still didn't reply. Palpatine sighed._

_"Then I'm afraid I'll have to teach you personally"—he raised his hands—"to never _worry_ me like that again."_

_Lightning barrelled towards her—_

And Leia was tossed out by raw agony, a whimper ravaging her throat. She opened her eyes to painful sunlight.

"He made you go first," she said to Horada, "didn't he?"

Guilt and fear and regret crashed together. Leia wasn't sure if it was hers or Horada's or Ahsoka's or Padmé's or of _the Force itself_; it was infinite, unending, _unyielding_—

And Horada said, "Yes." She swallowed tightly. "He did."

Leia didn't even react. She didn't know how she _could_ react.

Padmé asked Horada gently, "Was there anything else?"

Horada nodded, her voice thick. "I. . . received a message, just before I entered hyperspace. It said—"

She took a deep. "Tell Amidala. . ."

She swallowed.

"Emperor Palpatine sends his regards."


	32. Seventh Shadow

**Warnings for references to slavery, rape/sexual assault and suicide in this chapter.**

* * *

Leia slept terribly.

She always had, since she'd left Coruscant. Luke's pain rattled the Force with every scream, every twitch, every tear. But now it was worse.

Because the dreams were different.

A deep bass rumble. She couldn't make out the words, but she _knew_ that voice, as intrinsically as she knew her brother's, or her own. She knew the shape of that shadow, the creeping cold that accompanied it. . .

And every time its questions went unanswered, pain followed.

She woke up sweating.

_No_.

She scrubbed at her eyes with the heel of her hands, still feeling the. . . _sludge_ of that dark presence curling around her shoulders. No, he couldn't—

Her father wouldn't—

_No._

She didn't know what to think.

A glance at the chrono told her it was only three hundred hours, when she wasn't due to report to her menial tasks and pretend nothing was wrong until six, but. . . there was no way she was going back to sleep now.

No way she was going to risk seeing. . . _that_. . . again.

So she grimaced and swung her legs out of the bed, reached up to undo her hair from the plait she'd slept in. She changed quickly and didn't pause until she went to pick up the hairbrush.

_Finish that sentence and I will ram that hairbrush into you so hard you get imprints on your colon._

Remembered Luke's comfortable laugh, the ease with which he'd settled onto her bed and started doing her hair himself—

_What is this Empire coming to?_

The lie tinged with guilt, the secret neither of them had been able to voice yet—

—_it's up to us to changes things_—

—and how she'd just. . . let him lie.

They'd drifted apart so much in the road to defection. And then, of course, camaraderie had brought them back together, but it hadn't been the same.

How would it be when she reunited with Luke for a third time?

And, after. . . _everything_. . . where would their father fit into it?

She finished tying her hair and left the room, thoughts still far, far away. But it didn't mean she didn't notice, when she passed Padmé's office, that there was someone inside it.

_Padmé _was inside it.

She frowned.

Wandered up to the door and knocked, sharply; heard the intake of breath and felt the momentary surprise. Then Padmé said, "Come in."

Leia pushed open the door and immediately frowned further when she saw her mother seated at her desk, datapads stacked higher than her head at her elbows. She glanced up briefly; she smiled when she saw Leia, but it was. . . bleary. . . and her brow creased in concern as well. "Shouldn't you be asleep?"

"Shouldn't _you_?" Leia countered, sliding into the seat opposite her at her desk. "Did you just get up early or have you slept yet?"

Padmé didn't answer. Leia really didn't want to be the one lecturing here, but. . . "Running yourself into the ground isn't going to help Luke."

Padmé's lips twitched. "One might suggest you take your own advice, Leia."

Frustration welled inside her, but she had nothing to say to that.

Padmé glanced down at the datapad she was reading and put it aside, folding her hands on her desk. "The leaders of the other Rebel cells have pledged support—or, at least, approval—for rescuing Luke. We can go ahead with a full military attack."

Leia frowned. "And we couldn't before?"

"I'm the figurehead of the Alliance, motley collection of Rebel cells as it is. Each cell remains more or less independent, so I'm in charge of organising cooperation between them. I'm sure you've noticed this is just a token administration base—I don't have any great number of troops to command myself. I'm not a military leader."

Leia tapped her fingers against the arm of the chair. "And now you've got approval? Support, from the others?"

"Yes."

"What changed their minds?"

Padmé shrugged. "Who can say? Ana— Vader's picked up his attacks in the Outer Rim territories after he finished trying to _tie up loose ends_ with you and Luke, so maybe they feel pressured to do something they feel might strike back at that, or draw him away. Maybe they didn't want to look bad, considering _Saw Gerrera_ agreed to the rescue when they didn't. I don't particularly care right now." She rubbed at her eyes with her thumb—they were surrounded by two indigo hollows, like bright bruises.

Leia said, "You're terrified for Luke, aren't you?"

Padmé froze.

She lowered her hands back to their folded position; this time, Leia suspected, it was to keep them from trembling.

"Of course I am," she said. "I. . . may not have the Force"—Leia winced at the memory of their. . . _disagreement_—"but I still have nightmares about him."

Leia swallowed and didn't say anything.

"Why would you think I wasn't?"

She worked her mouth for a moment, closed it, then opened it again.

Finally she settled on, "You've seemed. . . distant." They'd been over this, but she reiterated: "Like you were avoiding me. Or avoiding thinking or caring about him. And. . . you left. . ."

"Yes," Padmé said. "I left."

She looked down at her hands and sighed.

Then she leaned back and went rummaging around in the drawers in her desk.

"I didn't want to leave you," she said as she searched, her movements quiet and precise. "I hated Tatooine, but I loved living with you two, Owen and Beru. . . You'd just taken your first steps when Ahsoka found out I was alive and contacted me, and I realised that I couldn't stand by any longer. I—" She choked a little. "I thought you'd be safe, on Tatooine. With those two."

Finally, her hand closed around something and she drew it out, passed it across the table.

Leia took the disc in both hands. She turned it over in her fingers for a moment before she lit the holo, and some unnameable emotion bloomed in her chest, behind her eyes.

It was Padmé. The woman in front of her was years older and unhappier, but it was still obvious.

Padmé was smiling, broader and more brilliantly than Leia had ever seen anyone smile—apart from Luke. She was holding the hand of a small, golden-haired toddler sitting on his bottom, who beamed back up at her in response. And he in turn was holding the hand of a dark-haired toddler, standing, face screwed up in concentration even as her brother weighed her down.

Leia took several breaths before she was able to actually breathe.

"I watched the Trade Federation invade my planet," Padmé said softly. "I watched your father the day your grandmother died. I watched the birth of the Empire, and I watched Anakin as he grew overwhelmed by the thought that I'd betrayed him and tried to kill me—and you two, inside my womb.

"But the day I returned to Tatooine to find you gone," she finished, "was the worst day of my life."

Leia was silent for a moment, taking that all in. Then she smiled weakly and said, "So, we have a plan to rescue Luke?"

Padmé smiled back.

"Actually," she said, "we were hoping you could help us with that. . ."

* * *

It was three weeks of planning, poor sleep and pacing, but eventually the day came.

Leia was going to get her brother back.

Padmé, for obvious reasons, couldn't come to Coruscant with them. But Ahsoka did. And it was her who picked up the slack where Padmé couldn't do any motherly fussing herself.

"Are you sure it's wise for you to come?" she asked, even as the _Hidden Star_ closed its landing ramp and took off. Leia rolled her eyes and inspected the passengers aboard it over Ahsoka's shoulder.

"I'm certain," she replied. "I'm going to rescue Luke."

* * *

The first test came, as expected, when they reached Coruscant.

It came even earlier for Leia, who gasped the moment they slipped out of hyperspace and darkness _swamped_ her senses; she chucked up shield after shield, praying that she stay invisible, silent as a ghost, barely a ripple on the Force. . .

Ahsoka gave her a tight look. "Can you sense him?"

_Him_ was left unclear. Luke, or Palpatine? She'd give anything to never have to sense Palpatine again, but she'd give ten times as much just to feel Luke once, to know that he was alright—

She shook her head. "No. Shields are up."

"And so are ours," Wedge said from his point in the pilot's seat. "They're hailing us."

Leia sucked in a breath, leaned back in the chair behind Wedge and closed her eyes. She didn't dare check with the Force what was going on, so she just scrunched up her eyes and begged, begged anyone who could hear her. . .

If this ship's captain was already wise to what was going on. . .

_"Trading ship _Iego Rising_, state your cargo and business on Coruscant."_

Biggs flipped the switch and replied, barely keeping the distaste from their voice, "Uhhh, manual labour for Imperial City," he replied. "We should be on the roster."

There was an audible pause, then the Imperial hummed when he read the records he'd pulled up in front of him. _"Confirmed, _Rising_. Transmitting approved course to Imperial Palace now. If you deviate from this course, you will be fired upon."_

"Copy that," Biggs replied. He managed to keep the shaking out of his voice until he finally breathed a sigh of relief. "That's it. We're on our way in."

Quiet exclamations greeted the news; even Leia smiled a little, meeting Ahsoka's eye.

"I'll go make sure everyone's ready," she said, and slipped back into the passenger's hold.

There were all watching all expectantly from the moment she entered, dressed in their roles of tattered slaves and armed slavers. Leia herself was wearing the same plain, poor-quality clothing slavers dressed their merchandise in, and condescended just like the rest of them to being shackled in a line, the thin metal binders rubbing at her wrists the moment they went on.

"You look tense, Skywalker," one of the 'slavers' murmured. Leia glanced up; it was Erso.

She had to be a slaver, Leia thought. They wore full-face helmets; the slaves didn't. And Palace security knew what Erso looked like.

They knew what Leia looked like as well, but that didn't matter. She wasn't going in the front door.

"Funny, that," she murmured back, then Erso wandered back down the line and someone nudged her with her shoulder.

"You alright?"

She nodded grimly. "You know, you can stop asking me that."

Ahsoka grimaced. "No I can't. You're Padmé's kid, I've got to look out for you."

"And make sure I don't break into Imperial strongholds unsupervised?"

"Exactly."

The _Star_ shuddered as it set down on a landing pad outside one of the trade entrances to the Palace. She kept her gaze on the floor, letting scraggly, greasy strands of hair hang down to obscure her face, hoping desperately that the bloody makeup they'd applied to it held up for at least initial inspection. She'd dyed her hair black and put in contacts to help; hopefully that, combined with the fact there seemed to be a fresh cut right across her face that bisected her right eyebrow, took out a chunk of her nose and twisted the left side of her lip, would help her pass.

To anyone who didn't know her well, of course.

It was not intended to fool Luke.

"The moment we reach that speeder," she murmured to Ahsoka, "jump."

She really hoped Erso was right about there being a convenient kitchen midden directly below.

She didn't know herself. It wasn't like she'd frequented the Palace kitchens often—or dared to look too closely at Palpatine's endless parade of slaves.

Voices, outside. Leia strained her ears to hear them, hoping—always at it with the hope—that her tension could be misconstrued as fear.

The ramp came down and Erso shoved an inactive stun baton into the back of the last person in line. "Get moving," she ordered, and the line started forwards.

This part of Coruscant was just starting to edge into dusk, and the light tinged everything bloody as the slaves filed out to be presented to the Imperial inspection team. Leia stood in line with everyone else, head bowed, but she _shook_. With cold, with anger, with adrenaline; she didn't know. But she stood there and shook as the inspectors made their way down the line.

"What was your name again?" one inspector asked a slaver, already sounding bored. He took a Rodian woman's chin roughly in his hand and pried her mouth open to inspect her teeth; he shut it with a scoff. "Your _merchandise_ isn't as high quality as what your boss usually delivers."

"Yeah, well, Crimson Dawn has been in decline for quite a while," replied the slaver in an accented voice. Leia frowned for a moment before she managed to place it: Andor. "Since the top man died—"

"I don't care." The inspector waved his hand. "That one, that one and that one, we don't want. Throw them back in your ship, throw them off this platform, I don't care. We're not paying for them."

"Alright," Andor said, "we can toss them back in the ship and find another buyer. No need to waste them." He made a short, sharp gesture with his hand and Erso stepped forward to release the indicated slaves from their cuffs, steering them back towards the _Star_.

The inspector moved along the line again, more quickly this time. His gaze, flinty and cold, swept from slave to slave with a ruthless efficiency—then stilled on Leia with a sneer.

A hand around her chin yanked her forward. She stumbled with the chains, rubbing her wrists raw and snapped her gaze up to glare with all the fury of a thousand suns—then snapped her gaze down just as quickly when she remembered her situation.

"Feisty, this one," the inspector observed, his grin tightening on her chin. "I see she's already paid the price for it."

Andor laughed nervously. "Indeed. If you think this is lively, you should have seen her when we first picked her up—"

"She's pretty, I admit," his hand felt from her chin and Leia scowled at the ground, "but the Emperor has no use for a pleasure slave whose pretty face has been marred like this."

"Oh no, she's a cook," Andor blurted out as fast as he could. It was like he could _feel_ the temperature dropping around them, Leia's storm barely contained by her adamantine shields. "She's seen plenty of use from past patrons in both areas, I'm sure, but she's one of the best moonglow chefs in the Outer Rim. Surely her value only increases once her. . . _temperament_ has been calmed."

The inspector had already moved on. "Surely."

Leia took a deep breath and tried not to collapse there and then.

Ahsoka bumped her shoulder in support.

"Hey," she said.

"No talking!" Erso snapped.

After another excruciating minute, the inspector was done. Their number had been halved, and Andor was busy grumbling about it to the inspector the way any cheated slaver might, so Leia just exchanged one weighted look with Ahsoka. It was time.

Ahsoka drew a long, rusty nail from her sleeve, then the barest touch of the Force—so light there was _no way_ Palpatine had felt it, _surely_—had both their cuffs springing open, clattering to the floor. Ahsoka dropped the nail as well.

There was an indignant shout behind her, the Imperial inspector—

Then they both surged forwards and _jumped_.

The fathomless levels of Coruscant flashed before her eyes for the briefest moment, then she saw the ledge she was supposed to grab and _grabbed it_, praying to the Force for guidance as the force of it nearly yanked her arms from her sockets and sent her careening into another platform landing knee-deep in something she really didn't want to think about.

Because this. . . wasn't a platform they'd landed on.

Ahsoka grunted, wading through the mess. "I thought Jyn said they didn't dump their waste until full sundown?" she groaned.

"This isn't full waste. Just the leftover from sunrise."

"Ugh," Ahsoka said, and gagged good-naturedly. "Middens."

Paradoxically, Ahsoka's distaste for the situation cheered her up more than anything else. She started wading after her.

"We just need to climb up to the top and sneak into the secret passages before they dump it," she said.

Ahsoka's knee hit something. It looked like a nerf's skull.

"I can't believe I'm saying this," Ahsoka said, "but I wish we could've taken the sewer."

* * *

Jyn kept her back straight and her face straight, for all that it couldn't be seen behind the mask, as they all rushed forward.

The Imp inspector knelt down to pick up the rusted nail between thumb and forefinger, like he barely wanted to touch it, and spat, "_How_ did your merchandise get ahold of this?"

"They must've picked the lock," Cassian said, shouting Jyn a faux glare. "We'll make sure nothing like this happens again."

"It had better," the Imp growled. "Crimson Dawn really is going to the dogs." He waved a hand. "Leave them be; forget about it. If the whores would rather kill themselves than serve in His Majesty's palace, then so be it. But I am not paying for them."

Cassian said something in response, but Jyn just stalked up and down the line of remaining 'slaves' wordlessly. She was smirking behind the mask.

Time for phase two.


	33. The Chamber of Bones

The chute that _this_ particular kitchen chucked their waste down was more horizontal than vertical, thankfully, and part of a complex maze of pipework in and around the Palace. Leia had spent three weeks studying the maps, seven years familiarising herself with the building, and yet she still found herself relying on Ahsoka to lead much of the way.

"If only I had my lightsaber," Ahsoka murmured, eyeing a particularly loose wall plating. Not loose enough to pry open by hand, but. . . "The younglings' dormitory is right down there. We could just carve our way through—"

"We'll just have to go the long way round," Leia grunted, heaving herself up another few metres. A fish skeleton swam past her in the deluge—a fish skeleton larger than her. Lovely. "And the lack of sabers is why we're _going _to the younglings' dormitory."

Ahsoka bit her lip. "That. . . doesn't feel right."

Leia shrugged. "It's necessary."

Ahsoka murmured, "That doesn't make it right."

Leia just ploughed on forwards. Quickly.

Ahsoka cursed and jogged to catch up.

* * *

The nature of the midden, or the kitchen chute, or whatever Leia wanted to call it, was that every kitchen in the Palace had a hatch that dumped its waste into it somewhere. Where she and Ahsoka had first jumped wasn't even particularly close to where it was spat out; it was just an area where it ran into a gutter-like channel and continued on.

But that meant that, if they were navigating correctly, they could wade through the waste and up the inclines to find the chute that opened out into the kitchen that was a part of the Jedi Temple. That had never been renovated into the whole.

And from there, as Leia ought to know, it was easy for one to sneak into the Palace—if one knew where the passages were.

So they turned left at the right time, and soon enough the chute began to even out more, growing less and less congested. No food had been dumped down here in nearly twenty years, after all.

Eventually, it grew completely dry. The light from the entrance had long since faded, but under the poor-quality robes they were wearing for their disguises, they'd managed to hide things that were _somewhat_ smaller than a lightsaber: a glowrod, an emergency comlink and, in Ahsoka's case, a mishmash of spare, half-assembled parts and a screwdriver.

They knew what they had to do.

When they finally wriggled out of the tunnel and into a dark, dusty kitchen, Leia let herself pause for a moment. Catch her breath. Then she glanced around.

It was only a small kitchen, she noted; probably why the chute had been such a tight squeeze. She could hear Ahsoka cursing behind her. It echoed oddly.

It was a small kitchen, but it had not been spared. Even after all these years, Leia knew what dried blood on the floor looked like.

Her father had done that, she realised.

She tried not to think about it.

But other than a brief, rough clearing of the carcasses, nothing in the room had been touched. There seemed to be. . . _something_. . . growing on the handtowels and surfaces that Leia didn't want to look at too closely, but she tore a clean-ish scrap of fabric off one of the aprons and uses it to wipe off the worst of the stuff on her.

She felt like shavit.

Ahsoka dropped to the floor behind her and groaned. "We're here?"

"We're here." Leia wandered to the door and glanced out, glowrod out and ready. "This way to the younglings' dormitory."

* * *

The Chamber of Bones was. . . a lot creepier than she remembered it to be.

Maybe that was because the rotting hand of that Rebel Luke had fought down here still lay at the entrance.

She kicked it away with her (already filthy) boot and strode right in, sweeping the glowrod over the bones and sabers. Ahsoka followed a bit more gingerly. She gasped and grimaced when she saw what the room contained.

It wasn't like Leia hadn't explained it to her when they were making the plan, but. . . to actually _see it_. . .

She shivered.

"Here." Leia knelt down to pick two sabers up, dusting them off. "Here's a pair of Shoto lightsabers." She lit them; they were a deep, brilliant blue.

"Leia, I hope you know I still don't like this— oh." She took them almost on autopilot, staring.

Leia tilted her head. "What is it?"

"These. . ." They slotted into Ahsoka's hands like they were made for her—as, indeed. . . "The last I saw these were on Mandalore. Planted beside Rex's fake grave."

Leia shrugged and didn't ask who Rex was. She felt like she might've seen him around base somewhere or something. "He must've dug them up and brought them here to gloat."

Ahsoka clenched them tighter to herself, spinning the blades almost thoughtlessly. She looked odd, holding them, like a teenager hugging the toy that had calmed their nightmares when they were five.

But they still fit her hands. She spun them some more, the tips drawing large oblongs in luminescent blue on the musty air because she extinguished them.

"Alright," she said. "Find yours, and let's go."

Leia didn't spend long searching. She eventually found a hilt that fit her hand well enough, that was a slightly paler blue than Ahsoka's when she lit it, and then they left. Ahsoka cast the saber an odd look, but didn't comment.

"Let's get into the Palace proper," she said instead. "We're running out of time."

"Shouldn't we assemble the device here? Before we get up there? So you can use it as quickly as possible."

Ahsoka grimaced.

She shot the bones another look. "Fine. But we're moving out into the corridor; I don't like this place."

"I suppose it reminds you of what's at stake."

Ahsoka shot her a sharp look. But her words didn't correspond to it. Instead she said, "Yes. It does."

It was outside, then, that Ahsoka stripped open the pockets sewn into her disguise and brought out the pieces. Leia held the glowrod aloft so she could see what she was doing and watched, fascinated, as her hands deftly assembled them.

She was halfway decent at mechanics—at least, as much as she was at flying—but it was similar to military strategy in that she'd not studied it since she opted for politics and related subjects full time. _She'd_ certainly have no idea how to reassemble an EMP grenade on the fly.

Lessons learnt during the Clone Wars, she supposed.

"How many of those do you have?" she asked as Ahsoka set the completed one aside and reached for the remaining parts.

"Four," came the reply. "If we use one in the right place, we can knock out almost all the security cameras in one blow with the discharge. One of these is larger, and is designed to knock out all blasters within range. The other two are for emergencies." Finished, she slipped all them back into those makeshift pockets—the bulge was obvious, but Leia didn't think they'd fall out anytime soon.

"Ready?"

"Ready."

"You get to the slave quarters, I'll get to the cells."

"Leia." Ahsoka's finger, slim but strong, closed about her wrist. "Be careful."

Leia frowned.

"I will," she promised, and she even half meant it.

_But_ if it came down to it. . .

She'd risk anything to get her brother back.

_Careful_ didn't come into it.

* * *

The 'slaves' cleared the strict checks and regulations regarding who could bring what into the Imperial Palace and then they were through. That Imp was already condescending to inform the slaves where the kitchen was, and how soon they'd be expected to work, the moment they were shown to their quarters for _conditioning_.

Jyn smiled a little. That guy would _regret_ telling them where the kitchens were.

The only reason he wasn't _already_ regretting it was because they had to wait for their signal. . .

. . .and then it came.

A high-pitched whining at first—then all the security cameras, in all the places Jyn could possibly imagine they'd be, exploded in a shower of sparks.

Everyone froze. The Imp stopped in his self-righteous speech and looked startled. Scared.

The troopers around them tightened their grips on their blasters.

Jyn sucked in a breath through her teeth. If Tano was doing her work right. . .

And she was.

Another moment, another wave: this time, the blasters all went out at once.

It was, Jyn thought with a vicious grin, truly remarkable how much EMP technology had improved since the Clone Wars.

"Go!" That was Cassian, barking, and everyone sprung into action.

The stormtroopers relied on might and weaponry more than skill. They fell easily—_died_ easily.

The Imp officer wasn't even worth thinking about.

It was barely half a minute later that they were alone in the corridor, and Jyn said, "That EMP pulse will have shorted out all the transmitters as well."

The 'slaves', some of them Partisan friends of hers, others a ragtag collection from Amidala's motley group of cell, turned to look at her.

"Let's get to the kitchens, and prove to the slaves that this is their chance." There were plenty of ships to steal here, even if Antilles and Darklighter were keeping the _Star_ running hot so that Skywalker could escape with her brother; if Tano and Skywalker could bust political prisoners out of the Palace's private cell block, there was no reason a mass slave exodus wasn't on the cards, was there?

"Anyone get where he said the kitchens were?"

Benthic raised his hand. _Follow me_.

They did. With vigour.

After all: blasters may not be working, so knives—especially big ones—were the next best thing.

* * *

It was far, far too easy to get from the Jedi Temple to the Imperial Palace, Leia thought. _Especially_ after she and Luke had escaped through there before; Palpatine ought to have red guards _swarming_ the area. But there was nothing.

No one in sight.

The moment Ahsoka's pulse ravaged the system, she dropped her shields and let herself use the Force again. It was no use hiding, after all; Palpatine knew she was coming, and he knew what she was looking for.

And he knew that there was nothing in this galaxy that could stop her from finding it.

She ran up, down, twisting through the painfully familiar corridors in a dance. Panicked people sprinted past her, only a few bothering to clock onto the fact she was a Rebel wielding an azure saber, looking ready to murder someone.

And she _was_.

But the people guarding the cells in the Palace weren't the ones in disarray. It took some fancy fighting and Force techniques to bring them down. And throughout it all. . .

Something was wrong.

The ease of the entrance, Luke's. . . _absence_ in the Force. . . something was very, very wrong indeed.

She crept through. These were standard cells, in the Palace—specifically designed to be close to Palpatine's meditation spots so the suffering would nourish him, true, but essentially an identical design to anything you would find on a Star Destroyer. Now that she wasn't hiding in the Force, it was ease incarnate to reach out to the cells and sift through them.

Rebels and Rebels and more Rebels. Three embezzling Imperial governors. A senator's aide who'd been accused of using spice.

No Luke.

But. . .

_But. . ._

There was one cell she couldn't sense anyone in.

Empty? Or Force-suppressant cuffs? She was inclined to think the latter; she could _sense_ empty cells, and none of _them_ were holes in the Force.

Cell 221B. Quite a trek, but she made it in barely a minute, the Force adding to her movements—and her urgency.

She jabbed the unlock button outside it; it beeped, then demanded she produce a code cylinder before she passed. She snorted and waved her hand.

The door slid open.

She peered inside and instantly met eyes as brown as her own.

A woman. A woman who, quite frankly, looked like shavit, with horrendous rings around her eyes and sores littering every inch of her that was visible. Her shift had several holes on it in the right sleeve; Leia knew exactly what _that_ meant. Her hair, which might have been brown and beautiful in a better circumstance, hung limp around her face.

"You're not Luke," Leia said, and ran out the door again.

She left it open, though. Another prisoner escaping would only help the chaos.

In fact—

A wave of her hand, and every door sprung open.

Ahsoka was coming here to free the other _politically significant_ other members of High Command had authorised. She was just helping her out a bit.

Then she cast out her senses again—and this time, she reached _up_.

Palpatine was gargantuan in the Force, like a gigantic aiwha had swept over the planet and cast the Palace in the shadow of its wings. She shuddered as he fixed his metaphysical gaze on her, cold and hideously amused, but stretched further, further—

The darkness parted like a veil, and there was her brother.

She was running before she'd even thought about it. She sprinted right past Ahsoka, leaving her "Leia, _wait_!" far, far behind. She flung troopers and bystanders into the wall if they hindered her in any way, and did not bother to make it gentle—or even survivable.

Palpatine was baiting her. She knew it, and her fury suffused every cell in her body. She vibrated with it. She was ready to kill, and he knew it.

He could not stop her.

The turbolift took entirely too long in taking her up to the level the throne room was on, and before it opened she let herself feel for attackers waiting outside. There were none.

She didn't expect there to be.

Palpatine was waiting for her.

It was evident from the moment she strode to the throne room and saw no red guards at their usual posts, no one else for her to carve a swathe through. The blue lightsaber hummed in her hand.

The doors flew open.

Luke's presence. . . _glimmered_. . . somewhere near here. She scanned the room, windows open to the light and bright for once, but she saw no blond head anywhere near.

Her lightsaber bounced eagerly in her hand as she stalked forward. Palpatine, standing peering at the window in the corner, turned to regard her jovially. "Leia! How kind of you to drop by."

She snarled at him.

He made no reaction. Instead, he just ran his gaze up and down her, her disguise, and said, "Clever. But there was no need to go to all this trouble. I would have let you walk right in."

She settled into a ready position, eyes still periodically glancing around the room. Now she was here, Luke's presence. . . flickered. Like a candle flame held up in a dark room, like a distant star.

Like a mirage.

* * *

It was dark and dim and dingy but there was a light, there was one light, and Luke. . . despite everything. . . He smiled.

He knew that presence.

Even blind, swamped in darkness, he'd know that presence.

* * *

It was at once behind and before her, left and right. She shook her head a little, dazed.

"Would you have let me walk right out?" she shot back belligerently. Luke had to be here _somewhere_. . .

He laughed. It was not a nice laugh.

"Leia," he said. "Do you really think I'm going to do that _now_?"

She just spat, "What have you done with my brother?"

"Very little, actually. Most of his injuries he inflicted upon himself."

"Liar."

He stiffened, she noticed with a perverse pleasure.

He did not appreciate having his manipulations called out.

"I told you there was no need for the disguise," he said instead. "But you know, it's endearing itself to me. You do look so much like your brother with the blonde hair, the blue eyes. . ." He smiled. "And the bloody face."

Leia did not so much scream as roar, and brought her saber crashing down.

* * *

**The Ahsoka novel by E.K. Johnston describes how, after Order 66, Ahsoka and Rex pretended to have killed each other and made a fake grave where Ahsoka left her lightsabers. The novel describes the lightsabers as green. The TCW S7 trailer, however, shows that the lightsabers Anakin gave her when she contacted him after she left the Order were blue. I've therefore put that in this chapter she has her blue ones. Sorry for any confusion.**


	34. Shatterpoint Seven

**I'm not 100% happy with the pacing of this chapter, but with the order of events in the previous two and the next few, this was the best I could get it.**

* * *

He dodged. Of course he dodged. He'd never sparred with her, never given her a taste of what he could do, but she knew he was good.

He'd survived the Jedi coup and assassination, after all.

A lightsaber flew from his sleeve in half a heartbeat, halting her blade just before it lopped his head off and did the entire galaxy a kriffing favour—

She yanked the saber back and slashed again; he parried almost effortlessly. His lips were drawn back from his yellow teeth in what might have been a grin, might have been a snarl.

"You're out of practise," he said.

A scream clogged her throat. She barely ducked back in time to avoid the strike coming for her, caught the second one on her saber, _pushing_.

He spun his saber; her own flew out of her hand, clattering across the floor.

She saw his eyes narrow—

"_No_." Her hand shot out and the lightsaber zipped back towards her—

Only to be halted halfway.

Palpatine's free hand was also out.

Leia gritted her teeth and _pulled_—

And it snapped towards her.

She caught it deftly, taking several long steps back, breathing hard. Palpatine's gaze was on her, thick with a surprising amount of hatred; she allowed herself a small smile.

In terms of raw, untamed ability, she was more powerful than him. She and Luke both.

And he knew it.

She held her lightsaber out beside her, unlit for the moment, and stalked around him. Her shoulders, her arms, were shaking.

"Where's my brother," she demanded.

"Do you know whose lightsaber that is you stole?" he asked.

She lunged forwards and drove the saber down two-handed—

He knocked it aside easily and she jerked back to avoid being gutted from nape to naval.

"Tell me where my brother is, you monster!"

"That was Barriss Offee's lightsaber."

She paused, chest heaving, sweaty hair tipping into her face. "I don't care who that is."

"You should. She was the first Inquisitor." He smiled a little. "The First Sister."

Leia rolled her eyes.

"At least, that's what she became."

She stalked closer, saber tip inscribing loops in the marble floor. The diamond-stars in the ceiling glinted above her.

"She too was young and naive, dedicated to ending war and tyranny, but disillusioned with the methods she'd been taught." He smiled wider. "She too turned to terrorism to make her point heard."

Leia flinched. "It's not—"

"You yourself have called Saw Gerrera a terrorist very often, have you not? And now you and Amidala throw your lot in with him. Do you—"

She slashed at him. He blocked it.

"Rude," he commented. "But as I was saying: do you truly hate me _that_ much?"

"_Yes_," she growled.

His smile was wider than a sando aqua monster's by now.

"Then you are _mine_," he said. "Just like she was." He tilted his head. "Just like your brother is."

She screamed and attacked him.

The dark side coursed through her veins like glitterstim, her heart raced, her muscles _wrenched_—

He stumbled back, startled by the sudden, intense onslaught and she seized that darkness that was so thick around them both and _shoved_, _flung_ him back—

He landed on the steps up to the dais with a crack.

She was right behind him, bringing her saber down again, and again, until his crimson blade slipped from his fingers and rolled away from him, winking out.

She glared at him with all the fury she possessed, the darkness coiling around her like an affectionate parent—

She wanted to _kill_ him, she wanted nothing but _murder_, to see the life drain from his eyes as he gasped for air, or stared where the saber went in; she wanted to _sense_ him vanish, to never return, to feel his blood spatter the earth—

And then the darkness barrelled into her and it _burned_. She must've blacked out for a bit; when she woke, a first seconds later, her lightsaber was gone and blue sparks were just dying in her peripheral vision.

Her arm was in _agony_.

"You're _mine_," he repeated gleefully. He was on his feet now, though blood soaked the right sleeve of his robe. His hands came up in that all-too-familiar position and she closed her eyes.

"You belong to the darkness, Leia." His voice was cajoling again, soft and forceful, and it cut her sharper than any admonishment would have. "These Rebels, these _Jedi_ you've thrown your lot in with. . . they would never understand you. They will never accept you. You will never be good enough, pure enough, _light_ enough, in their eyes.

"Because you belong to the darkness. You have your anger, your hate; you were one of my most promising pupils. It can be like that again, Leia. You can save your brother, and find the belonging you seek."

"I don't seek _belonging_," she spat. "I just want you _dead_."

"You seek destruction?"

She spat at his feet.

"As I said," he continued. "You belong here. You belong with us, in the darkness. Surely you know that?"

Leia hesitated.

_Ahsoka tells me, Kanan tells me, that they are worried about you. The dark side will eat you alive. _

She did know that. She didn't belong with Palpatine, _never _Palpatine, but the Sith. . .

_Once you've wallowed in death and destruction, once you've burned the galaxy to ashes to rescue him, you will have to find out if that was really what Luke wanted._

She knew that, and she knew that it _wasn't_ what Luke would want for her. That it wasn't what she would want for him, in reverse.

She curled her hand around the emergency comlink in her sleeve. Then shoved herself to her feet, stumbling a little.

"I belong with my family," she told him. "And you—you and your _precious_ darkness—are no family of mine.

"I will spend no longer in this cold throne room than I have to."

He glared. "You _insolent_ little girl—"

She threw out her hand and the windows shattered. Chilly night winds swept in to tug at her hair, her rags; ruffle Palpatine's robes. The bloody fabric shimmered in the starlight.

Then she turned on her heel and ran.

Luke was not there. She didn't know where he was—had he ever been there at all, had Palpatine tricked her?—but he wasn't in that room, and so soon neither would she be.

She reached the precipice where the window had once been and jumped.

Skidded on some roofing tiles, softening her landing with the Force. Hopped from ledge to ledge, _resolutely_ not looking down, even as she felt Palpatine's dark nova explode behind her. He was barking orders—

But there was the familiar shape of the _Hidden Star_ nimbly vaulting the spires, and there was the open ramp.

She landed inside it with a roll—_ow;_ she'd forgotten that she'd hurt her arm—and heard the _snick _of the ramp closing.

"You alright?" Biggs shouted back to her. Leia lay on her back, panting.

"No," she said. "I haven't got my brother."

"Oh."

"Ahsoka and the others are on their way out, right?"

"Yeah. You're the last to be picked up."

"Great." She drew herself up just enough to bury her face in her knees, finding herself strangely tearless after. . . _everything_. "That's just great."

She found herself reaching out to the Palace even as they fled it. Luke's light was shrouded again, even from her, and it was tormenting her. She wanted, more than anything, for her brother to hear her, to reply, to let her know that—

That—

He wouldn't resent her for leaving him behind again.

She couldn't bear it if he did.

"At least we're all alive," she muttered.

The words felt hollow.

* * *

Leia may have escaped, rejected his offer, but Palpatine was not without the means to make her regret it—for the rest of her life.

The hidey-hole he'd shoved Luke into was cramped and unpleasant; he dragged the boy back into the vastness of the throne room as quickly as possible and stalked around him as he tried (and failed) to get his bearings.

Before he could, the red guards were around him again and he flinched, terrified. They did not reach for their Force pikes, but when they seized the boy by the arms and dragged him away, his dazed mind concocted all sorts of agonies they were about to do to him. It stained the Force red; Palpatine lapped it up with glee.

It was a few hours later—a few hours of more pain and torment later, for Luke—that he visited him back down in his private, hidden cells. He imagined Leia would have been _very _interested in coming down here, he thought, had she known where they were, but it was of no import. Leia had fled, _again_, and left her brother at his mercy.

Again.

And after both twins' stubbornness, he had no mercy to spare.

When he swept into the room, the red guards stepped back to reveal a frail, broken form of a boy in amidst the swirl of their red robes. Palpatine smiled.

"Leave us," he commanded, and watched the broken boy try to curl up into a foetal position at the sound of his voice.

Much like he had in the throne room after his first failure to kill those Rebels, Palpatine mused, all those months ago. . .

He crouched down beside him. Cold, clammy hands felt along the wrecked and ruined clothes to grasp his shuddering shoulders, pushing him upright. Luke cried out.

"Shhh, my boy," Palpatine murmured. "Lean back against the wall. Be still."

He sensed the will to resist flash through Luke's mind, but the boy was weak, in agony, and _tired_. He gritted his teeth and tried to spit something out. . . and that something dissolved into another moan of pain.

"Now, now, child." Palpatine gently tilted his head back, gently pulled out a syringe with a drug inside it, and—_ever so gently_—slipped the needle into Luke's arm. "I'm sure that hurts. Wouldn't you like the pain to go away?"

Luke said nothing. Palpatine tightened his grip, and the needle bit. "Wouldn't you like the pain to go away?"

Luke stirred briefly, eyes even more glazed than before as the freezing numbness spread up his arm and to his head. His thoughts swirled sluggishly, like water under ice.

He nodded, very slowly.

Satisfied, Palpatine lowered himself into a cross-legged position opposite him, amber eyes sharp on his face. Luke's irises were more grey than blue.

He said, "I'm so, so sorry, Luke."

The boy frowned, clearly trying to drag himself into some form of lucidness, but there was a reason Palpatine had finally given him painkillers.

"I know this has all been terrible for you—you think you're suffering for your family, for what they would want, but I have been trying to tell you the truth for so long now, and it is time you accepted it: It's pointless. They have abandoned you. Why do you remain loyal to them after all of that?"

_Why does anyone remain loyal to you?_

Palpatine heard his thought, loud and clear; he smiled, and pretended not to have.

"I wish I had your faith in people, my boy." He sighed. "To keep fighting for someone even after they'd tortured you, even after they stormed a palace trying to slaughter you. . . It is admirable, but foolish, and it will only get you killed. I only want to see you safe and as well as can be, my friend," he took Luke's chin in his and Luke could not resist as he tilted it upwards, "and see you give your wonderful, powerful devotion to those who would scorn it so. . . it breaks my heart."

Luke was frowning, desperately trying to focus on. . . anything. "They. . ." He tried to shake his head; all he really did was. . . _shiver_ it. "Torture. . .?"

"Luke. . ." Palpatine let himself sound concerned. "Do you not remember Lord Vader in here, several days ago? He. . . was not gentle."

Luke shivered his head again. "No— Father. . ."

"I understand. Perhaps it was too terrible for you to remember. But, child, it's all the evidence you need to—"

"No."

He stiffed, swallowed, and forced himself to say, "What was that?"

"No. . . killing. No one wanted to—"

"_Luke_." He silence him with a gentle, pained laugh. "Surely you sensed your sister?"

He saw Luke tense up, realisation clouding his mind further as he cottoned on to what Palpatine was saying.

"Surely you sensed her anger, her murderous intent? She was searching for you incessantly, remember?" His mind would have been far too clouded, his Force connection far too erratic, for him to sense much else. . . but he would have sensed that much.

"Luke, I am so sorry."

"No." The word was weak, though, and doubt riddled his mind. "No. . ."

"Luke. . ." He placed a hand on his cheek. Luke was too busy staring at the floor, his hands, in mounting horror to jerk back or object. "I am so sorry. But you have to understand. You cannot give so much of yourself to someone who only wishes you ill."

"No. . ."

"Join me again," he coaxed. "Come back to where you belong. Leave your traitorous family behind and I promise, next time your father tries to lay a hand on you, next time your sister comes for you with murder in her heart—_and there will be a next time_—we can stand together. Or, you will be strong and capable enough to stand alone."

Then he leaned in to whisper, "But you don't _have_ to stand alone."

A tear slid down the boy's cheek.

Palpatine rose. "I shall leave you to think about it. I know it has been an overwhelming day."

And then, just as he'd hoped, a surge of resolve cut through the fog on Luke's mind long enough to illuminate one path to take, one course of action, before sweeping in again.

He made to leave.

"Wait."

He kept leaving.

"Master," Luke said. Palpatine stopped in the open doorway.

He turned his head and shoulders back to face him. Luke's pale, colourless eyes were wide, his face ashen. Pain contorted his features, his body—but so did desperation. He reached towards Palpatine like a weed towards the sun.

Palpatine took a step back towards him, let those grasping fingers touch the hem of his dark robes.

"Yes, Luke?" he asked lowly.

"Please," Luke swallowed, "Master."

He took a shuddering breath and cast his eyes down to the floor.

"Wait."

* * *

Leia disembarked the ship with a heavy heart and a frown. Alderaan was bright, the palace gleaming.

There'd been no communication through hyperspace, neither Leia nor Wedge nor Biggs had tried it; perhaps the other two were letting her decide what to say about this travesty of a rescue operation.

He'd known she was coming. How?

Had she or Ahsoka not been shielding well enough? Had they given it away when they'd brushed the Force to survive the jump to the midden? Had she taken too long to get to the cells, so he could spirit her brother away before she arrived?

Had Luke been in those cells at _all_ or in those fabled private dungeons of his, buried somewhere in the mass of the palace where no one would ever find him?

. . .or had he just _known_?

His much-vaunted foresight had proved a problem to them in the past.

It seemed set on continuing that trend.

The questions plagued her mind, day and night cycle. So she couldn't sleep, couldn't _speak_—and she certainly didn't know how she was going to tell her mother, her stressed, overworked, _worried_ mother, that they'd failed.

Perhaps it was for the best, then, that they'd received a message shortly after entering hyperspace to set course for Alderaan. It meant she only had a few hours to stew, rather than days.

_Why_, exactly, they'd been diverted to Alderaan. . . she had no idea.

She had no idea.

They'd emerged from hyperspace to the Force _exploding_ with light, especially around the palace in Aldera. As soon as Wedge and Biggs made for that area, Leia came forward to the cockpit to watch the city sprawl beneath them.

It was beautiful, she admitted.

The cool, arching architecture reminded her of Naboo, somewhat, if the buildings in Theed were taller, narrower and more. . . metallic. No, actually, it wasn't the architecture at all: it was the _green._ Parks blossomed at various intervals around the place; mountains clustered around the cities like flowers.

It was nice.

It was Coruscant's bright, pleasant antithesis.

Once they got closer to the Palace, the comm crackled with a comms tech issuing orders. Biggs replied, but Leia ignored them both; she was watching the landing pad they were heading for.

Watching who stood on it.

Ahsoka was already there, waiting; Leia felt her bright presence expand to encompass the ship, brushing against her mind in greeting. Leia brushed back. . . and felt her sense grow questioning when she scanned the rest of the ship to find only Leia, Biggs and Wedge.

Leia didn't comment.

She watched Ahsoka's figure, growing larger and larger as they approached the platform, lean towards Padmé to whisper something. By now, they were close enough to see Padmé's face slip from hope to confusion. . . to fear.

They landed, the ramp went down, and Leia emerged.

Her gaze went immediately to her mother and Ahsoka, but the person who stepped forward first was neither of them.

A tall man with tan skin, who _oozed_ culture and diplomacy.

Leia disliked him immediately, and that was before she even connected the face to the name from her political studies:

Bail Organa.

He smiled at her—she was sure that anyone else would find it warm, endearing, but she just thought it reeked of practised politeness. "Welcome to Alderaan, Leia."

She did _not_ like him using her first name.

She glanced at Padmé. Her mother was watching her with a grave expression.

This was her friend, she remembered. Organa was her friend.

So she smiled back. Its politeness was evidently forced and she did not bother to correct it. But he got the hint.

He waved her forward. "Your rescue attempt?"

"Failed," she ground out. They were in earshot of Padmé and Ahsoka now; she watched her mother's face fall further.

"Well, we rescued several valuable political prisoners thanks to Fulcrum's efforts," Organa tried. He nodded at Ahsoka, then Leia. "And your own, of course."

She gritted her teeth, suddenly finding words difficult to form. "We did not rescue my brother."

Padmé reached out to lay a hand on her shoulder. "There was nothing more you could've done."

"_He said_," Leia choked out, "that I— that I was _his_—"

"Leia—"

"He predicted my every move," he spat. "He knew _exactly_ what I was going to do, and I felt like—"

"Leia. . ." There was a hand on her shoulder. She shook it off.

"I felt like him."

She finished, quietly, "And in that moment. . . I wanted to be."

Padmé frowned. She turned to Ahsoka. "Can you. . ."

Ahsoka nodded, took Leia's arm, and guided her inside.

She said, "I know you and your mother have spoken about. . . about the dark side, and its implications, and whether you think you should continue to use it. I believe you expressed an interest in learning the light?"

"Just to compare," Leia muttered.

Ahsoka laughed. "Yes. Just to compare."

Leia gnawed on her lip as they mounted the steps and wandered through the palace's cool, marble halls.

"Alright," she said, "can you. . .?"

"I," Ahsoka grimaced, "am not a skilled teacher." Leia thought that might be selling herself a bit short. "But you have a visitor who is."

"Who—"

Ahsoka stopped outside a door to a small lounge and waved Leia inwards.

Leia stepped inside, taking in the paintings on the walls, the rich carpet, the luxurious sofa. . .

And the creature sitting there.

Green. Small. Wrinkled.

Shields upon shields unravelled and a vast, crackling Force presence unveiled itself, so _explosive_ Leia wondered how she ever could have missed it.

"Welcome, young Skywalker," Master Yoda said. "Expecting you, I was."

* * *

Bail squeezed her arm. "Are you alright?"

Padmé shook her head but said, "I'm fine."

He grimaced, then led her inside. Showed her to a private office nearby, indicating the lock on the door.

It wasn't until she'd sat down and he'd left, silence falling like snow in his absence, that she put her head in her hands and let out the sobs that cracked her chest in two.

* * *

Luke had spent twelve hours in bacta and a further twenty four hours in the medbay by the time one of Palpatine's lackeys came to show him to his new quarters.

They were located in the Palace—in the same tower as Palpatine, in fact, close enough that his presence hung all over the place. Luke had no possessions of his own to bring; he'd want to return briefly to the apartment, he thought, to get his datapads, some clothes, his. . .

What?

What was he doing here?

Palpatine's lackey was still droning on and on about the rooms, the view, the appliances—as if Luke didn't know all of this already. He just walked up to one of the windows—floor to ceiling, wall to wall— and peered out over the violet dusk of Coruscant, the shadowy skyline.

"Leave," he said quietly.

The lackey paused. "Are—"

"I said, leave."

The man paused again, hands fluttering as wildly as his pulse, but eventually frowned and said, "Yes, my lord."

_My lord_.

Luke raised an eyebrow but didn't turn to look at him. He left, and Luke was alone.

Well, not totally.

"_What_ do you think you're doing?"

Luke felt for the Force. Pried through these new quarters until he sensed the whirring of holocams and, in one last fit of rebellion Palpatine would no doubt be expecting, crushed them.

Then he bit out, "It's nice to hear from you too, Kenobi."

"Manifesting myself is difficult, I told you that. I've been gathering my strength."

"It's been weeks."

"Time does not exist in the Force."

Luke snorted. "Whatever you say."

"Luke. . ." The ghostly form reflected in the window approached him cautiously. "What have you done?"

"I've decided to return to my old habits—"

"_Luke—_"

"—of treason." His voice quietened. "And espionage."

Silence.

The ghost shook his head. "He'll find you out. You only survived a few months, last time."

"_Any_ _day_"—Luke clenched his fists—"I survive, _out of that cell_, is another day to—"

Ben's reflection frowned.

"Live?" he offered quietly.

Luke swallowed.

Cast his mind back to that presence of fear and anger and desperation and _intent to kill_ that he'd sensed, half-awake, in the thick shadows of the throne room.

"Help Leia," he murmured. "Even— Even if he realises I'm only pretending to repent, it's better this way. At least I have a chance."

"A chance to do what?"

"What do you think?" He gave a humourless laugh. The sky was dark, now. "Same as before. Report back. Try to skew things in the Rebellion's favour.

"And the moment I'm able to escape. . . I will. I _will_ return to Leia."

"Leia. . ." Ben frowned. "What Palpatine said to you—"

"Was a lie." Luke nodded. Tears. . . they'd flowed freely in the cell, on the way here, but now his eyes were perfectly dry. "I know."

"You do?" Luke nodded. "How?"

Luke's gaze turned upwards—to the now-black sky. No stars could ever be seen from Coruscant for the light, but he knew they were out there.

Just as his sister was out there, somewhere.

He said simply, "Because she's Leia."


	35. The Imperial Cog Keeps Turning

The apartment was just the same as Luke remembered it.

He kept his shields up tight and shoved the Force away—_anything_ to dismiss that. . . oiliness of Palpatine's presence dogging his footsteps—so beyond a brief initial probe to confirm that his father wasn't inside—

—he was on planet, though, Luke could sense him; he'd returned from Naboo and wherever else he might've been to torture his only son and hadn't left yet—

—Luke was walking in blind.

He'd known he wasn't prepared for this, and he wasn't.

The apartment smelt the same as it had weeks ago, when he'd left to. . .

What? What had it been for?

To visit Mara? To visit Horada, in the Archives? He couldn't remember why he'd initially gone to the Palace; only that he'd went, and his life had torn itself to shreds within those walls.

Now. . .

He forced himself not to look as he breezed through—to not look at the sofa and the table, to not look at the window Leia had reportedly punched that first time Palpatine had punished him, to not look down the corridor to his father's hyperbaric chamber and the master bedroom, where his parents must have once slept, happy, unaware of the tragedy they would both doom— the tragedy that their children would be doomed to.

He didn't look.

He couldn't. The sheen of tears in his eyes was too thick for him to see anything, anyway.

He made a beeline for his room. Once inside, he just threw whatever clothes he could find inside—not anything he _loved_, nothing he could stain with bitter memories and betrayal; he left all that here, in the desperate hope that his father, despite the brutal, torturous monster he'd proven himself to be, might find it in his durasteel heart not to destroy them out of insatiable vengeance.

The desperate hope that, one day, he could retrieve them, along with a childhood innocence he'd shed months ago.

No. Not innocence.

Luke had been— Luke _was_ a Sith. He had not been innocent for nearly eleven years.

It hadn't been innocence.

It had just been ignorance.

He'd closed the wardrobe, paced as his self-deprecating thoughts seized hold of him, then he pivoted on his foot. Opened the wardrobe again.

His capes. Eleven of them from birthdays, many of _those_ non-fitting. Others gifts for state functions, celebrations, rewards.

He left them all behind. He had to.

But when he got to the end of the row, he couldn't bring himself to let go of one. His fingers brushed the tiny sprinkling of diamonds, the embroidery; the pattern of the Naboo and Tatooine star systems, twinkling in the twilight of his wardrobe.

He let go as if he'd been burned.

Then, agonisingly slowly, he pulled the cape off the hangar, tossed it onto the pile he'd already made on his bed, and went looking for a bag to put it all in.

* * *

Luke, despite his permacrete shields, noticed him the moment he exited his bedroom.

Then again, Vader knew his breathing was very distinctive, and Luke was very on edge; even without sensing him in the Force, Vader knew that much. He knew his son.

At least, he thought he had.

He'd returned to Coruscant to what he'd hoped for: Palpatine contacting him to inform him that Luke had seen the error of his ways, but that he was. . . somewhat angry, with Vader.

Vader could understand that. What he could not understand. . . was this.

Luke stiffened when he saw him; that was not _anger_ there, but. . . fear. Apprehension. A bone-deep, entrenched betrayal and _hurt_, plain as day.

Vader wanted to hug him, but it was evident how that would go over.

His gaze sought Luke's right hand. It was clenched into a fist.

Vader's chest was always tight. That didn't mean he couldn't feel it when it tightened further. "Luke. . ."

"What do you want." Luke's voice was cold and flat; as monotone as Vader's vocoder. He hated it. "_Father_."

Vader watched him for a few moments more. "You look terrible."

Luke tensed further. "I wonder why."

The flatness to his voice, his defensive stance, his. . . _withdrawal_ into himself. . . Vader winced to see it; no, _cringed_. This was his son.

He did not want to see the hallmarks of a traumatised, broken in Inquisitor on his young, clever face.

But he didn't know what he'd expected. He'd cut off his hand. He'd thrown him to the wolves.

He'd given his son to a slaver and expected him to come home free.

Luke clutched the bag he was holding tighter to himself. His limbs were trembling, Vader realised; from latent injuries or fear or fury, he did not know. They shook like eggs about to hatch.

And that was when it _surged_ in him, a desire he'd suppressed and squashed and silenced for weeks now: that fatherly instinct to protect and help, to shelter him until he was well again and forever after that too, to stand between him and the terror that made him shake like a leaf in the night. To heal the pink scars that marred his once-innocent face; to hear him laugh and tease and smile so much he cried; to never see _that_ expression on his face again: that terrible, terrible snarl that came of trying to hold it all in when his façade was cracking, his lip trembling and his eyes glistening but his chin and shoulders set and his eyes straight ahead—

Vader loved his son. Nothing drove a stake into his heart like the knowledge that he might well have lost him now, too.

He opened his mouth—to what, he didn't know. Justify, scream, apologise. Beg for mercy. Beg for forgiveness.

Luke was already gone. He'd strode out of the room like a man possessed the moment Vader's shields started to thin.

Vader, to an extent, followed him out. Stopped in the living room, watching him go. Collapsed onto the sofa. His gaze caressed the table; it was still scuffed, from the last time Luke had planted his feet on it. . .

The door slammed shut. It was like the bang of the firing squad.

Vader rose to his feet, hastened towards the landing pad. He stood out there, wind tugging at his cape, impervious to the driving rain outside that even now stung his son's hands, white-knuckled on the speeder controls, drummed on Vader's mask like a frantic heartbeat.

Vader watched Luke take off and vanish into the airlanes. He did not move.

No. He just stood there amid the winds and chaos and descending dusk of Coruscant.

For a long, long time, he did not move.

* * *

"Ah! My boy. You made it."

Luke's back was stiff as he strode into the throne room again. It had to be stiff—he was still tense from that _interaction_ with his. . . _father_—and besides: he could sense something was amiss.

Not that that was unexpected. He was here. Leia was thousands of parsecs away, and he was not with her. Everything was amiss.

But right now, more immediately—

His gaze fell on the other person in the room and only by conscious effort did his step not falter.

Palpatine lounged on his throne, smiling, and said, "I trust you are familiar with the Grand Moff Tarkin?"

"We've met," Luke said dispassionately. It was a strain to keep his emotion, his _disgust_, from his voice, but he let Palpatine feel it through the Force as he eased himself—reluctantly, letting him feel that reluctance, too—to one knee. That smile widened.

It then burst into a faint cackle when Luke added, derision in his tone, "I've heard a great deal about you from my sister, Governor."

Tarkin stiffened himself, but clasped his hands behind his back and walked towards him with short, measured footsteps. "Ah, yes. Miss Leia was always very vocal about her opinions. I suppose it is a mystery how she went undetected for so long."

He stopped. Palpatine hadn't seen fit to give Luke permission to rise, so he towered over him. Luke's neck and legs were beginning to strain from the position.

"But clearly you have more sense than your sister," Tarkin continued. Luke forced himself to think about his anger at. . . _everyone_ in this room and project it onto Leia, _oh Leia, I'm sorry—_

"I m sure you will show yourself to be of use when tracking her movements. I look forward to working with you."

Luke lifted his head at that and looked straight at Palpatine.

The man was smiling widely again.

"Tarkin has kindly volunteered to help you ingratiate yourself back into the ranks of the Imperial Navy, without the shadow of your father or your sister hanging over you," he informed him, still with that infernal grin. Luke's heart beat quicker. "You will be accompanying him, as an aide or protégé of sorts, to help him oversee some of his most important tasks. Kuat, the governing of the Outer Rim Territories, Project Stardust—"

Luke flinched.

Tarkin?

Project Stardust?

_Tarkin_ had been given control of the _Death Star_—

"It will provide you with everything you need to ascend in this Empire. Unless," he added severely, "you want me to return you to your father's tender care?"

Luke flinched again. He let that fury he'd gathered burn hot, hotter, inside him, until he thought the frigid darkness that fed off it would freeze him where he knelt.

He thought he heard a cautionary whisper, but it was just the roaring in his ears.

"I thought not. Tarkin will be a much better fit for someone as bright and skilled as you. He'll be with you every day, to teach you what you need to know, and you will benefit from someone of his acumen and ambitions."

Luke gritted his teeth, but didn't disagree. Palpatine was assigning him a watcher—he was going to use Luke, the way he always used Luke, but he wasn't going to trust him with anything yet.

He hadn't expected him to.

He just hadn't expected it to be _Tarkin_.

But who would he rather it be?

Thrawn? Tarkin was no fool himself, would be a challenge, but Luke would not prefer to have Thrawn as his supervisor.

"And of course, in case of any further assassination attempts that may be made on you by. . . those close to you," Luke let his hate flash at that—at the _lie_—but one again, directed it towards Leia, _I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry_, "I am assigning someone to accompany you. They will meet you later."

Great. Another watcher to bypass if he ever wanted to—

He blinked.

What was he going to do?

Was he going to contact the Rebellion immediately? Would they even trust him?

What if Palpatine found out?

What if—

A cautioning voice in his ear again and he calmed his thoughts, meeting his master's gaze again. "Thank you, Master."

"Rise, my boy."

Finally, Luke got to his feet. The straining of muscles so recently healed _hurt_, but he just let that burst into the Force. Increase the darkness—the mirage—around him.

"Come here."

Straight backed, head held high but eyes averted out of respect and. . . something else, he approached. Mounted the steps, until he stood before the throne directly. Palpatine inspected him like a prize shaak.

"You are afraid of me, child," he said, so softly he doubted Tarkin could hear it.

Luke said nothing. His limbs were trembling.

Palpatine placed a hand on his shoulder. His gnarled grip was tight. "You have nothing to fear," he whispered, "if only you remain true to yourself, and loyal."

He let go. "I have a gift for you, my boy."

And then he held out Luke's lightsaber.

Luke froze.

He took it with trembling hands, barely daring to breathe. The weight was comfortable in his grip, every ridge intrinsically familiar—and he _remembered_.

His father had given him this sword.

His father, who—

"Use your anger." Luke snapped his head back up. "Use your fury. They will serve you well, Luke." Palpatine placed a hand to his cheek and dragged a fingernail down it in a mockery of affection. "Do not let the pernicious influence of the Jedi weaken you as it did your sister."

_Of the both of us, the only one who was making contact with an ex-Jedi was me._

Luke bowed his head. "Yes, Master. Thank you, Master."

"Now go. You will leave with Tarkin the day after tomorrow."

Tarkin added smoothly, "We shall be visiting Cymoon One, in an attempt to motivate Director Vilrein into increasing its output. I'm sure you'll be of much use to us."

Luke ignored him. "Yes, Master." He turned, _painfully_ aware of his exposed back, the memory of excruciation and blue sparks sending shudders through his shoulders, but he went. Step by step.

Tarkin met him briefly at the bottom.

"Your sister once said that we could work together," he told him, holding out his hand. "Knowing what I do now, I am pleased that I get to work with you instead."

Luke shook his hand in a light, perfunctory gesture, then turned his back on Tarkin and strode out. He did not linger long enough to feel the man's outrage.

He paused right outside, feeling the red guards' gazes fixate on him, then kept moving forward. It was when he turned the corner that he heard the voice.

"Skywalker."

He turned to greet them and the breath was momentarily sucked from his chest.

It was Mara Jade.

He was quiet for a moment, just. . . looking at her. He hadn't seen her since she'd—accidentally?—left his cell door unlocked, and it had been long enough since then that any injury she may have received for the offence had healed. He. . . genuinely didn't know what to make of her.

Didn't know where she stood.

Didn't know what to _say_.

That was okay. She spoke first.

"I see our master gave you back your lightsaber." She bobbed her head, and her throat. Her hands flexed. "Good. We'll need it for training on the _Sovereign II_."

"Training?"

She narrowed her eyes at him. They seemed darker than yellow, for once. "I have been assigned to re-develop your saber skills as well as guard you, Skywalker."

"_Re-develop_? And—"

"Re-develop them after you were so badly injured."

"—_you're_ the one—"

"Yes." The word was ground out. "Believe me," she said sweetly, "I don't want to do this either."

He tilted his head, feeling a familiar vindictiveness tug in his chest. "Don't think you can handle it, J— Sixth Sister?"

She ignored his slip up—took an aggressive step forwards. "I can handle it. I'm good enough."

"I beat you easily before. Once I'm healed, it'll be no time at all before I'm beating you again."

She took another step forwards, tilting her head up so as to look him in the eye. "_Once you're healed_. You'd have to actually have the courage to face me until then, and I will not hold back."

"I thought you said you bore me no ill will over the last time I beat you so thoroughly?" He tossed her a smile and made to walk down the corridor. "And when have I ever made you think that _courage_ was something I was lacking—"

"The rest of your family certainly lack it."

Luke stilled.

He pivoted on one foot and glared at her, hand automatically going to the lightsaber at his hip. "What?"

She froze under the force of his glare but continued to spit, "It's the truth. No matter how much you disown them"—_you're meant to have disowned them, calm down, _calm down_—_"you're like them. You'll run away and isolate yourself at the first sign of trouble."

Now she was just fishing for ways to wind him up. But it worked. "Where the _kriff_ did you get that idea?"

She tilted her head in challenge. "Your sister left you alone and fled—twice. Your father just returned to Coruscant for the first time in _months_ because he was running away from the problem of _you_. It's in your blood. . ."

But Luke didn't hear those last few words.

That _blood_ was rushing in his ears.

He said, "What did you say?"

She looked taken aback.

He imagined he must look odd as well: a young, dark-clothed figure poised tense and trembling in the middle of an opulent Palace corridor. The light from one of the windows hit her face, casting deep shadows that twitched when she worked her jaw.

"I said," she reiterated, "that everyone in your family is a disloyal coward."

"You also said that my father hasn't been on Coruscant in months."

"He hasn't." She squared her shoulders. "He got back _yesterday_ and he's heading off again in a week. He was at Naboo, Tatooine—"

"He hasn't been here."

"That's what I _said_."

Luke had the _distinct_ memory of—

Well, the worst memory he could have of his father.

And it had happened a few weeks ago. At most.

Which meant—

Luke hadn't been moved. At all. Same cell every time, with the same Force-blind perimeter. He was sure about that.

Which meant—

And Mara was _evidently telling the truth_. . .

He stared at her.

He stared at the wall, towards Palpatine's throne room, to glare through brick and stone and steel at that _liar_, that manipulative piece of—

He spun on his foot and strode away.

"Skywalker!"

"I'll see you tomorrow," he bit out. "Thank you, Jade." He didn't bother correcting himself that time.

"Skywalker!"

He'd _lied_.

* * *

"Ben!" he hissed the moment he was back in his own quarters. The holocams had been fixed but he was pretty sure he was speaking too quietly to be heard. He hoped. "Ben, why didn't you _tell me_!"

_Tell you what?_

"That he _lied_ about my father torturing me!" he shouted. Quietly. The emphasis still came through. "That he— he planted a _vision_ in my head so— so that—"

He cut himself off.

"You told me that Leia didn't come here to kill me," he said. "_Why didn't you tell me this as well?_"

Ben was silent for a moment. He hadn't even bothered to manifest himself visibly; he was, for all intents and purposes, just a disembodied voice.

"Because for all I knew," he said sadly, "Vader would come later to prove him right."

Luke shut up.

Bowed his head.

Clenched his right hand.

"He— he wouldn't."

"You believed the lie."

"Because I thought I _remembered _it!"

Ben sighed. Luke had the inane thought that it must be odd, sighing without a body.

"I have little strength," he said finally. "Should we not discuss your plan of action from now? Tarkin. . ."

Luke clenched both his fists and forcefully drove his father—_especially_ the intense melancholy he'd sensed from him earlier—out of his mind.

He'd _lied_.

"Yes," he bit out. "We should."

* * *

It was a dark, densely populated moon that put the lower levels of Coruscant to shame. The worst and best of every species congregated here, amongst the filth and the fights and the fools' gambles. Nar Shaddaa was an unsavoury place full of unsavoury people.

It was exactly the sort of place Aphra loved.

"Aw, c'mon, this is an Old Republic original! In _pristine_ condition! You gotta give me more for it than that."

A stream of near-indecipherable chatter. _"Ten thousand. Take it or leave it, Aphra."_

"_Doctor_ Aphra."

_"Not from what I've heard. Take the ten thousand or get out of my sight."_

She glanced down at the little guy—she really wasn't sure what species Aramaok was, but he came up to her waist and would savage her shins if she annoyed him at all—and groaned. "Fine. Fine. You win." She muttered under her breath as she took the credits, squinting suspiciously as she counted them, then slung them into her bag and turned away.

It _really_ wasn't her fault that Archaeological Association had suspended her doctorate. How was she supposed to have known that they'd know she'd faked her findings?

She could've sold this anywhere but the black market for _ten times_ as much—

Her comm was chiming.

She heard it the moment she lowered the ramp to the _Ark Angel_; the call was redirected from her shipboard comms to the one on her wrist, but she was here anyway so she jogged into the cockpit to take the call.

When the image of the caller popped up, her eyes blew wide. "Boss!"

Lord Darth Vader, the Supreme Commander of the Imperial Forces, folded his arms across his chest in the way he always did when he wanted to seem intimidating.

It worked.

_"Cease the pleasantries, Aphra." _Only Darth Vader would call those _pleasantries_. _"I have a mission for you. As always, you will be well-compensated for your efforts, provided you succeed."_

Aphra narrowed her eyes. "You haven't contacted me in two years. Since. . ."

He stiffened at the implied reference to the. . . _shortcomings_ of his cybernetics, but continued: _"It has never been necessary to skulk in the shadows before."_

_Skulk._ She almost snorted.

"Then what makes it necessary now?"

He was silent for a minute. Then another minute.

Just when she was about to make a snarky comment—and probably get herself strangled for it—he said, _"I want you to find my daughter. I am sending you the information about her now."_

She blinked. His— "The little teenage bra— _girl_," she corrected herself, "from last time?"

_"Yes. She has run away."_

"Why?"

Another pause. _"She is with the Rebels. I would like her back here, where I can talk some sense back into her, before the rest of the Empire catches up."_ He pointed a figure at her, heavy with threat, before she could even _begin_ to compute all the staggering implications of that. _"Do not fail me in this."_

"Yessir." She blinked, still processing. "Should I be looking for your son or—"

_"Do not speak to me about him."_

She swallowed. "Right. Got it, Your Lordship." She grinned. "One rebellious teenager will be returned in no time."

The holo cut out without any further goodbyes.

She waited a second. Two.

Then Aphra shouted, "Are you _kidding_ me?"

Hunt down _Darth Vader's kid_? That little snotty space sorceress? She'd get herself sliced and diced within moments.

And—

What the _kriff_?

Leia. . . whatever her last name was, Vader? Leia Vader _defected_? And— _and_ her brother, if Vader's (admittedly characteristic) grumpiness was anything to go on?

Aphra stared at the information sent to her comm, grinding her teeth more and more with every word. Not that she didn't _love_ family drama (when it wasn't hers) but this. . .

Yeah.

Kriff.


	36. Connections

**Alright, so this is a short chapter, and I'm also _really _uncertain about the characterisations of Qi'ra and Jyn. I need to rewatch Solo and Rogue One (_again_) to try to nail it in future chapters, but in the meantime if you have any questions/points about their mannerisms or characterisations (or even their relationships with Leia!), please let me know.**

* * *

Hyperspace was an emptiness in the Force, or more accurately a blur. All Leia could sense when she meditated were the weak presences of Wedge and Biggs, playing dejarik in the main room.

Oh, and the blinding little _troll_ sitting opposite her.

"Feel the Force, you must," he said. "Not just the dark, is it. Reach out, past your feelings, and—"

"I think I get it."

He sighed. His ears drooped a little. "Much anger, you have in you."

She rolled her eyes. "I wonder why."

"Angry, you are," he reiterated. She barely restrained herself from rolling her eyes again. "Understandable, this is; angry all beings must be, in the natural way of things. But learn to let go of it, you must, in order to—"

"Reach the light," she parroted, shifting in her spot on the floor of her quarters. "I know."

He tilted his head ever so slightly and closed his eyes. His lips twitched. "Then, if understand, you do, follow my instructions, you must."

Leia gritted her teeth.

"Relaxing, that requires."

"Don't preach at me."

A grunt. "If you are to learn, young Skywalker, listen, you must." Then, before she could snipe back with a reply— "Follow instructions, also."

She made a grumbling sound, low in her throat, but closed her eyes and sank into the Force.

It wafted around her, like a cool, fresh breeze on Mustafar. She let herself breathe, lips curling as images from that _appalling_ rescue attempt played in her mind and her own anger and fear fizzed in her veins—

"No."

She let out a breath, throwing her hands up. "_What_?"

"Exactly what you are doing wrong, you know."

"I—"

"To learn the ways of the Jedi, _want to_, you must."

"_Jedi_?" She scoffed. "I promised Ahsoka I would learn the light side, so that Palpatine would not be able to predict and control me. I said _nothing_ about becoming a _Jedi_. . ."

Yoda sighed. His ears drooped again.

"Reach for the Force, you must," he said gently. "Peace, you must feel. Ignore your feelings—push them away. If touch the Force when you are calm, at peace, you do, clear from the dark, the light will be."

"Ignore my feelings?" That. . . didn't compute. "_How_?"

Yoda—raised a Jedi, lived a Jedi, for nine hundred years without entertaining or _considering_ other ways of the Force—was silent.

Leia let out a breath between her teeth.

Right.

She just had to do everything herself then—

The Force rushed into her, intoxicating and glittering in darkness as it always was, but when that familiar cold started to bite she. . . didn't _push back_, but she turned away. Towards something else.

When they'd started being trained, when their age was still in single digits, her father used to chide her for turning away from _true power_, for what she chose to turn her attention to. What her priorities were, not in the general scheme of things, but in that moment.

Every time she discovered something new, she would turn to share it with Luke.

He would do the same.

A tension she hadn't even realised she was carrying bled from her spine as his young face came to mind, chattering excitedly, speaking half in images and feelings, half in words, in his attempt to convey the sheer _wonder_ he felt at this bright, brilliant gift they'd had their whole lives. . .

Warmth flooded her, and a feeling like. . . sunset light and chiming laughter and the smell of jogan-scented detergent the droids used to clean her bedsheets on Mustafar. . .

Something _evaporated_ deep inside her. . .

She took a deep breath, eyes still closed, and released it .

When Yoda smiled, and shook his head, she did not see it.

* * *

That peace only lasted so long.

Soon he'd moved them to the main room and had her running basic exercises: flipping credit chips, levitating whatever debris she had in her bag or on her ship, _standing on her hands and balancing when Wedge accidentally got them into a dogfight_—

She was sick of it.

"I've _already_ mastered this," she complained, sending Yoda's gimer stick pin-wheeling around her head and straight back at the diminutive Jedi Master, narrowly missing—a terrified yet fascinated—Biggs on the way. "Do I really have to—"

She ducked as it shot back at her. Her lightsaber flew from belt to hand to flash in an arc around her.

The gimer stick clattered to the floor in two smoking pieces.

Yoda narrowed his eyes at it. "Hmph."

"Sorry," she said. She wasn't, really. "But I really don't need to do this." She said to Biggs, still staring at the stick, "Stop it."

"Sorry."

She rolled her eyes.

Yoda was watching her. "Patience, you must have. Out of the habit of the darkness, train yourself."

Putting up with Yoda was _not_ going to help her stop reverting to the darkness.

Biggs offered, "You're great at this."

"Thanks," she bit out, glaring at Yoda. "Is there nothing—"

"_Patience, you must have._" His lips twitched in that infuriating smile of his. "Learn to—"

"Shut up."

"Useful, manners can be."

Her lips twisted. "On occasion." She felt a minute vibration in the ship. "Realspace?"

"Yeah." Biggs got to his feet. "We're back at Dantooine. Amidala should've got here before us—we took a few extra stops and Alderaanian cruisers have particularly good hyperdrives. . ." He trailed off when he saw Leia's face.

Luke would've been interested. She was not.

"Good," was all she said. Then, kicking the two halves of Yoda's stick out of her way, she stalked back into her cabin.

After a moment's thought, all the stuff she'd been levitating slung itself out after her.

* * *

"Thank you for taking the detour to Alderaan," Padmé said when she marched into her office. "I know it was inconvenient, but—"

"He's a menace."

Padmé laughed. "Your father used to—"

She paused.

Swallowed.

"I've heard that opinion before," she amended. "But he's been teaching for eight hundred years. He must be doing something right."

"Or the Jedi are doing something _wrong_," Leia muttered.

Padmé tilted her head. "I concede the point. He must have taught you _something_ useful, though?"

Leia grumbled.

Padmé laughed. "Alright."

"That not what I came in here to talk to you about," Leia said. "Luke. . ."

Her mother, suddenly, looked like she'd aged ten years. "The rescue attempt failed—"

"So what are we doing about it?" she demanded. "What else can we do, how else can we get him out?"

Padmé sighed. "Leia. . ."

"Don't _Leia_ me. You said we could rescue my brother. He is still in Imperial custody. So _how are we going to rescue him_?"

"We lost our last agent in the Palace in the first failed attempt. We spent a lot of resources on the second failed attempt—"

"And you said that you gained a lot of valuable prisoners too! So why not—"

"Leia," Padmé said. "This is, to an extent, diplomacy. Unless I can get the cell leaders to agree, I can't justify the waste of resources again to infiltrate _Coruscant_—"

"_Waste_?"

"—for _one boy_."

Leia said stiffly, "That boy is your son."

Her father would not have questioned this, she knew. If Luke or Leia had been held by the Rebels, he would have _burned the galaxy to the ground_ if it meant he could retrieve them safely.

Padmé's throat bobbed. "That makes it worse."

Leia made a disgusted noise in the back of her throat and clenched her fists. Her limbs were trembling.

Padmé was not Force-sensitive, but even she could feel the temperature diving.

"Leia," she said, gesturing for the seat opposite her desk. Leia thumped down into it. "Didn't Master Yoda. . .?"

Leia grunted and. . . let go. Or rather, she clung even more tightly to her images of Luke, of the both of them, happy and safe and loved. She didn't relax—not until the image of Luke sparring with her after the revelation about Tatooine, in so much pain and so confused but shoving that aside to comfort her, flashed to mind.

Her brother was kind, and brave, and _strong_.

She just hoped it would be enough.

Padmé breathed again when the temperature began to resemble something more like normal.

"I will look into the possibility," she said. "Believe me, Leia, I'm not going to give up. But you have to understand that Palpatine clearly wants him—you _both_—very, very badly, and if it turns out to be too late for Luke. . ." She swallowed. "You should learn to—"

"Let him go?" Leia's voice was icy. "He's the other half of my soul."

Padmé grimaced, and nodded. "I know."

Leia's hands made to clench into fists again.

It was then that there was a knock on the door.

"Come in," Padmé called, and Leia begrudgingly lifted her gaze from where it have been inspecting a peculiar twist in the wood grain of Padmé's desk to land on a newcomer.

She looked. . . oddly familiar.

Her brown eyes narrowed, and Leia's eyes narrowed to meet them. An image flashed to mind: a prisoner in a cell, disappointment and a rush to keep going—

"Did you find Luke in the end?" the woman whose cell she'd opened, then _left_ open, asked her.

Leia gritted her teeth. "No."

The woman—a very glamorous woman, now she was cleaned and freshly dressed and put together, perhaps ten years older than Leia—nodded gracefully and brushed a lock of hair out of her face. There was simultaneously a carefulness and an arrogance to every one of her movements, every one precise and intentional. "I'm sorry to hear that."

"Leia," Padmé said, "this is one of the valuable prisoners we did manage to rescue from Coruscant. Qi'ra. She works in Intelligence—she's one of the best."

Leia raised an eyebrow as Qi'ra took the seat next to her, and accepted the proffered hand. "Qi'ra. . .?"

"Just Qi'ra," she said with a small, tight smile.

Leia didn't push.

"And this, Qi'ra," Padmé returned, "is my daughter, Leia Skywalker."

Leia jerked at hearing Padmé use that word—not that she didn't say in it _private_, but it said a lot about how much she trusted this woman.

Qi'ra glanced between them, clearly tracking the similarities in their faces, their figures. Leia swallowed the bitter thought that with her glacial calm to Leia's rage, her poise to Leia's constant conflict, her easy smile to Leia's perpetual scowl, _Qi'ra_ looked more like Padmé's child than Leia suspected she ever word.

"Charmed," she said.

* * *

She'd left soon after that, to let Padmé talk Intel or. . . whatever Qi'ra had been there for. Induction into the workings of the base? Discussion of whatever dirt Qi'ra had on the Empire, Palpatine in particular? Leia didn't know.

Instead of heading back to Yoda and his empty platitudes and insistence on uselessness exercises, she went back to maintenance. The poor woman there looked at her like she'd seen a ghost—Leia wondered if, with all the missions she'd been on recently, they'd half-hoped and half-worried that the sullen and irritable yet effective errand girl wasn't coming back—but Leia just did her best to drag her face into a smile.

She probably looked a little crazy, but the woman sighed and sent her to one of the hangars, to organise and document all the things in the crates that were being sent in. Saw Gerrera and his Partisans were coming to roost here for a while, until this tentative partnership inevitably collapsed, and until then there was a lot to do.

It was while she was there that she was interrupted.

The door to the hangar hissed open behind her. Leia was crouched on the far end behind the cargo shuttle, knee deep in boxes that some _wermo_ had left inside for her to have to drag out herself. She barely glanced up from her datapad, and the box hovering in midair—_with_ the light side, so Yoda didn't get all fussy, which took enough of her concentration as it was—but called out, "If you're here to remove the shuttle, I'm not finished yet; otherwise you've probably got the wrong hangar—"

"There aren't enough hangars on this base to get confused by." The newcomer snorted. "I'm looking for you, Skywalker."

Leia glanced up _then_, to see Jyn Erso pick her way round the ship and stand in front of her, one belligerent eyebrow raised.

"Erso," she greeted. "You did well on Coruscant."

"And you failed on Coruscant." Erso cut her eyes from Leia's face to the datapad to the hovering crate. Not self-conscious, but starting to feel the strain of her split attention, Leia put it down. "And it's just Jyn. You're not with the Empire anymore."

Leia bristled, but didn't respond.

"Why were you looking for me?" she said instead. "It's not like we talked much before the mission."

"No. But if Saw's setting up shop here for some time, I figured we should."

"Afraid you won't be the only one with a reputation for bluntness and sullenness on this base?" Leia asked.

Jyn barked a laugh. "In a way." She sat herself down on one of the crates.

"I can sense you're curious as well," Leia told her, checking something off on the datapad without really looking at it. If she was going to be blunt with her—which Leia genuinely did appreciate—then she was going to return the favour.

Jyn smiled a tiny bit, leaning back. "Who wouldn't be, when the demon twins defect?"

Leia grimaced. "How many of your people know about that?"

"Me and Saw. And Cassian, but I guess he's technically one of yours. An in-between." Jyn tilted her head as she saw Leia move onto the next crate, and hurried to glance at the datapad and assist. "Why? Afraid of the truth getting out?"

"I just don't want to deal with even more stares."

"And if your brother arrives and things start to get obvious?"

"_When_ my brother arrives," Leia corrected, "I'll be able to handle it."

Jyn blinked. "It's on your own that you can't do it?"

"Yes." Was that not natural, for someone to want to not be alone?

Jyn frowned. "If you've got a twin brother," she said slowly, "I guess I get it." But she didn't understand it.

"You have the Partisans. Weren't you practically raised with them?" _What would you know about being alone?_

Her question wasn't spoken, but it hung clear as day nonetheless. Jyn stiffened.

"Saw gave me a loaded blaster and abandoned me in a bunker when I was sixteen," she said. "I spent three years alone—didn't come back to Saw until he asked me to, for the Kuat mission you so royally shot to hell. I may not have someone I'm tied to, heart and soul and whatever else demon stuff you have"—a look at the crate that had been levitating—"but some of us just deal with it."

Leia swallowed at the bitterness in the tone.

"I'm sorry," she said. She was surprised to find she meant it. "But I miss him. I—" She swallowed as images of Tatooine, the homestead, flashed to mind. "I. . . remember what happened the last time I lost family to the Empire and I'm—"

"Afraid."

"Yes."

Jyn was looking at her again. "_You've_ lost family to the Empire? Your family _is_ the Empire."

Leia didn't say anything—just bit back her retort and nodded.

Jyn seemed very. . . disturbed.

She'd been raised by Gerrera from a young age.

"My parents," she said in reply to Leia's look.

Leia guessed, "Galen Erso?"

Shock, surprise, defensiveness—then a slow nod.

Leia smiled sadly at that surprise. "I'll explain everything to you," she said, "if you explain everything to me."

Jyn watched her for a moment, head tilted, before she said: "Deal."


	37. Intrigue and Execution

**From here on out, this fic will try to deal with deal with or at least portray Luke's trauma and reactions to the events of the past twelve chapters. However, I have no personal experience of anything like this, so if anyone has any feedback or advice, I would love to hear it.**

* * *

Military dress uniforms were uncomfortable.

Luke had always known that. He'd had to wear them before, but his father had always let him get away with something similar if he found it _too_ uncomfortable, or— he didn't know. But the dress uniform he found in his quarters, lain out on the bed painstakingly neatly, despite fitting him so perfectly it was eerie. . .

He picked it up and ran his thumbs over the fine material, fisting his hands in it. Then, very slowly and methodically, he walked into the 'fresher to pull off the simple black and blue clothes he'd retrieved from his old apartment, and pull this on.

The trousers fit him very well; they'd be comfortable if he was used to him. The shirt sat on him neatly as well, the same uniform grey of any other officer's garb, though he wore no rank insignia. The collar. . .

Fabric pressed against the skin of his throat.

His vision went dark, his hand at his neck, and he heard winds roaring in his ears—

He collapsed to his knees, gasping for breath, everything dark and loud and _painful_—

_Luke._

Ben's whisper pierced the fog momentarily, but he still couldn't see his own pale, terrified face in the mirror. "Huh?"

_Luke. Undo your collar._

Almost on autopilot, Luke reached up to fiddle with the top button and loosen it. He could breathe again.

He did. Deeply.

He rasped in great, heaving breaths for minutes on end. In, out, in, out, in out. . .

Eventually, his vision cleared and he was left crouching on the floor, coated in a cold sheen of sweat.

He. . . was not going to think about that.

Was not going to think about any of that.

He studied his reflection. His hair had been shorn military-short at some point in his imprisonment, though he couldn't say he knew when. He was as pale as bone, and the stark violet bruises under his eyes seemed all the darker for it. His hands, when he looked at their reflection, were trembling.

He looked like shavit.

But he could sense a severe, uptight presence approaching, so he couldn't stare at himself any longer. He squeezed his hands together and clenched them at his sides in a desperate effort to still them.

He could do this.

He had to do this.

He stepped out of the 'fresher.

Before he went straight for the door, however, he made for his own room. The cape he'd received on their eighteenth birthday, the twin of Leia's, slipped off the hangar and into his hands, settled around his shoulders.

He took a deep breath, eyes closed.

He could do this.

He had to do this.

For Leia.

Tarkin was waiting for him in the antechamber to his quarters, without having bothered to knock or ring or ask to be let in. Luke's gaze was drawn to the code cylinder in his breast pocket; he suspected that Tarkin had access to just about anywhere he could go.

There was no hiding from his new. . . _watcher_.

His spine felt like it had been replaced by a metal beam, but Tarkin's cool gaze swept over him and found no fault in his posture, so Luke assumed he was doing alright.

_You'll be alright, Luke,_ Ben said softly. It wasn't a wind, it was a breeze, and that. . . that, maybe, was why he relaxed ever so slightly.

Even if he didn't trust it.

Ben had kept some very important information from him before, after all.

Luke gestured—stiffly—to his own dress uniform, then Tarkin's impeccable one. "What's the occasion? _Travel_?"

Tarkin's thin lips turned up in a smile. "Unfortunately not quite yet, Luke." Force, he _hated_ hearing him use his given name. "I am aware His Majesty informed you we would be leaving today, but last minute news has come from the front lines. A task force I was commanding on Corellia has finally met with victory. The Rebels in that system have been entirely routed and those that were captured have been scheduled for execution later today. His Majesty insisted that we all celebrate, and so has held a function in the main ballroom in my honour."

. . .wonderful.

"It ought to last long enough for us to watch the executions live."

Even more wonderful.

_Be mindful of your feelings, Luke, they betray you._

_And I'm betraying everything and everyone anyway,_ Luke shot back. He had no response.

"Wonderful," he said aloud. He thought he'd done a good job of scrubbing the sarcasm from his voice, but Tarkin turned his nose up at it anyway.

"Your collar is unbuttoned," he observed.

Luke gritted his teeth. "I know."

Tarkin pursed his lips.

"We should go," he said shortly, and they both turned as the door hissed open.

Mara pressed her lips together when she looked at him. She was dressed in an outfit of trousers and a dark blue blazer-like jacket that _looked_ respectable—_presentable_—enough, but Luke had no doubt she had blasters, a lightsaber, thermal detonators, vibroblades, and another lightsaber for good measure, all somewhere on her person.

She bowed her head to Tarkin and gestured him onwards. "Lead the way."

* * *

Controlling himself was a lot harder with Mara at his elbow. He still wasn't sure whether she thought watching _him_ or watching the other Imperials for threats to him was more important.

They arrived at the main ballroom to find the function already in full swing, with austerely dressed officers and moffs and senators milling about with drinks in hand. They turned when Tarkin arrived and greeted him loudly, though a thin smile and a wordless incline of Tarkin's head instantly made it clear to them all what he thought of such fawning.

Sycophants. Trying to climb the hierarchy and seek favours from powerful men and find a position with which they could get _more_ credits, _more_ power, _more_ prestige.

Luke didn't know how Leia had put up with them for so long.

Some people didn't immediately look away at Tarkin's irritation, though. Luke glanced up and caught one such officer's eye—a surprisingly short man with a neat cap on and a rank plaque that named him a captain.

Luke tilted his head slightly. He looked familiar. . .

Then he heard the hissing of a respirator and looked away hastily, pulse leaping. He could feel it beating in his fingertips.

Piett. Piett was his name, the captain from the plan— the captain of the _Executor_, that was, who he'd talked to and cooperated with on the way back from Kuat—

That heavy breathing was right behind him now. Luke refused to turn, though he was sure the tension in his shoulders and his opacity in the Force gave away more than the stark _terror_ on his face ever could.

His father said, "Luke."

Luke swallowed and, at a pointed, amused look from Tarkin, turned to look up at him. The contours of the mask had never before seemed so horrifying.

"Lord Vader," he greeted in return.

His father's helmet tilted minutely, so much so that Luke knew no one else would have noticed it.

Not even Leia.

"Your collar is unbuttoned, young one," he said finally. His hand twitched, like he wanted to fix it himself—though Luke doubted his prosthetics could handle the fine, fiddly button—but didn't dare reach out.

Good.

"I'm aware."

The Emperor hadn't arrived yet, but Luke knew he would revel in watching this. That, more than anything, was what made him open his mouth to end the conversation, say _anything_ to end the conversation—

But no sound came out.

His throat was scoured drier than the dunes at midday.

Mara, however, _did_ step between Luke and Vader then and asked calmly, "Was there anything else, Lord Vader?"

His father stirred at the interruption. Anger—no, mere _irritation_, which somehow made it worse—sparked and he lifted his hand in her direction—

And Luke flinched.

Vader froze.

The mask turned towards Luke. Towards Mara. Back to Luke again.

"Yes," he got out, taking a step back. The tiniest bit of tension eased from Luke's shoulders. "That was all."

Luke turned away before he could even make to retreat, Tarkin easily moving to meet him.

"Ah, Luke, I'd like to introduce you to two of my associates here," he said smoothly. "These are Admirals Motti and Tagge."

Two men, equally stocky, balding and stiff, smiled at him by way of grimacing.

"This is Luke," Tarkin said to them, "Lord Vader's son."

"Charmed." Luke wasn't sure which one of them said it; they looked the same anyway.

But then one of them, and he was pretty sure it was the one called _Motti_, spoke. He cast a dismissive look over Luke, gaze snagging on the lightsaber just visible under his cape, and snorted. "I suppose you consider yourself some sort of wizard as well?"

Luke gritted his teeth.

* * *

Vader stood in the middle of the ballroom, a sea of people bunching and swelling around him, but his focus was on one alone.

Luke was bright as ever, but still closed off with shields upon calcified shields, like the layers of a mountain. He looked terrible.

Vader. . . tried not to think about why that was.

He failed.

His chest hurt.

Seeing Luke _glare_ at him the way he had, with that much fury and pain and vitriol, his chest hurt.

He'd done this.

_No_: Luke— Luke had betrayed him, they'd both betrayed him, he'd been perfectly right in punishing him like this and forcing him to see _reason_—

But. . .

He had not meant to drive Luke away.

He had not meant to kill Padmé, either.

And there were many, many unacceptable things in his life—Palpatine's continued rule, Luke and Leia having turned traitor in the first place—but one such unacceptable thing was the idea that he would never see his son smile at him again.

He closed his eyes. Clenched his fists. The creak of strained leather drew Piett's alarmed gaze, Ozzel's too-inquisitive-for-his-own-good gaze, but Vader ignored them both.

He would get his son back. No matter what manipulations Palpatine had ensnared him with, no matter how harsh or justified Vader's reaction had been, he _would_ have his family reunited. Happy. Loyal.

Luke was wearing the cape he'd given him on Empire Day. Surely that meant something. Vader would see him come around again. He would.

Wouldn't he?

Foresight had never been his forte, but he found himself desperate enough to reach out anyway, under the cackling gaze of his master in the Force.

_I have never known you to have much luck with foresight, my friend._

He frowned, brushed it off and _focused_—

A scene. Dark—both because of the dark red lenses he peered through, and the dimly lit nature of the throne room. Luke's bright bob of hair, kneeling on the floor, and Vader knelt next to him, arms around his shoulders. Luke's face was pressed into his chest and Vader held him tightly. Ever so tightly.

Vader smiled when he opened his eyes again.

Embraces had always been rare between them. And with the way Luke had flinched back from his mere touch earlier. . .

Yes. _Yes._

Things would get better. They would.

Satisfied, and content to allow the future to shift into the image he saw, Vader turned away.

* * *

"You," a cool, smooth voice behind Luke said, "I have not had the pleasure of speaking to yet."

Luke turned, ignoring the way his muscles bunched and tensed instinctively at the sight of yet another officer in uniform, with yet another aide—was that all Luke was now? Aide to Tarkin?—who no doubt wanted to suck up and coddle—

He blinked.

His eyes found the Grand Admiral's rank plaque first, eyebrows creeping infinitesimally up his face, then his gaze caught on the blue skin and red eyes and he understood.

"Admiral Thrawn," he greeted—half-begrudging, half-curious.

"_Grand_ Admiral," a pointed voice corrected him. Luke raised his eyebrows minutely—just enough, Leia had taught him, to immediately make his face look snooty and haughty without noticeably changing his expression—and looked at the aide at Thrawn's elbow. He looked short, and young, but only because he was standing next to Thrawn. He was several years older, and quite a bit taller, than Luke, with dull brown hair and a slightly pinched expression.

Eli Vanto, Luke recognised. He had nothing against the man, but moved his gaze away with a dismissal that surely stung.

This was the Imperial Court. As much as he'd want to be nice to an officer who'd genuinely worked well and performed admirably for years, as an Outer Rim hick serving a non-human in the elitist Imperial military, _this was the Imperial Court_.

Luke just stared Thrawn down until even he had the political acumen to wave his aide's objection to the side.

"I've heard so much about you," Luke continued at last.

"Oh, I assure you that it is my pleasure, young Vader." Thrawn held out his hand and Luke shook it firmly. It was cold, and very dry.

"Vader is my father's name," he said stiffly. "I'm just Luke."

_Skywalker_ still fit him like a glove, he thought bitterly, but no one here wanted to call him _that_.

"Nevertheless, it has been quite some time that I have meant to speak to you," Thrawn told him. Luke shifted on his feet.

"Oh?" he said, instead of voicing. . . _all of that._ "Why?"

It was blunter than he usually was. His father—

He looked at Thrawn, who was studying him with that crimson gaze.

"You were the one to recommend my service to the Emperor for the hunt for Amidala, were you not?" Luke got the sense he was about to regret that. "You and your sister also flew my TIE Defenders extremely well—and your father's subsequent support in that project has proven invaluable." He nodded his head in gratitude—and respect. "Thank you for your assistance."

"It was what was best for the Empire," Luke said automatically, suddenly aware that _someone's_ gaze was fixed on his back. He didn't know who it was—Tarkin, Vader, Palpatine himself, sitting on his throne—and didn't dare to look around.

"Then I thank you for your faith and confidence, rather than your endorsement."

Luke tried to say, coldly, "I hope you've proven worthy of it."

"Indeed, I hope so too. We believe we have narrowed down the location of Amidala's main base to somewhere in the Raioballo sector—Dantooine seems the most likely candidate at the moment, though I do suspect Lah'mu. I am on Coruscant to ask His Majesty for permission to conduct further operations and raids in the area."

Luke nodded politely—almost disinterestedly—but he was anything but.

_Listen_, Ben whispered in his ear. Cold pricked along Luke's spine. _Listen. . ._

He had no idea where Leia was.

But if she was in the _Raioballo_ _sector_. . .

Luke smiled. Stiffly but genuinely, and he hoped his _loyalty_ was unquestionable.

"Then I am thrilled," he said warmly; Vanto jerked his head up to stare at him, the sudden change, "that we have the right man on the job.

"I am sure you won't fail." He smiled again, a little sharper. "An officer of your reputation and calibre, after all. . ."

"I shall endeavour not to," Thrawn said. "If—"

There was a sudden fanfare. The Imperials around him all turned in unison to face the viewscreen that was scrolling down at the end of the room. Luke had already turned, almost before the fanfare sounded, and his gaze was already fixed to the other side of it: on Palpatine's smug smile, as he sat on his smug throne.

That yellow gaze met his and Palpatine nodded to him, lifting a glass. Luke felt mocked.

The viewscreen lit up to show a view of Corellia. A city square Luke vaguely recognised and a squat, grey building that was probably the local Imperial garrison made up the background, but the holo's focus was on the governor who stood with practised stiffness and watched twelve beings in binders be dragged out from inside the building.

Luke saw a slight figure, a head of dark hair, and immediately seized up—then relaxed. It was not Leia being dragged out to face a firing squad. She was not with the Rebels on Corellia.

That left an infinite amount of planets for her to be on—an infinite amount to search. _Good_.

_"For the charges of high treason, destruction of Imperial property. . ."_ the governor began to read out, then continued with a list of their crimes. Luke glanced at the Emperor, then looked away quickly when he realised _he_ was looking at _him_.

He shifted where he stood, uncomfortably aware of the oh-so-perceptive Thrawn at his back. He was half-glad that even Tarkin had had no real desire to hold this function on Corellia; Luke didn't have to see the executions in the flesh, feel their lives vanish forever in the Force.

Four humans, two Duros, three Twi'leks, one Rodian, one Ithorian, and one of a species Luke didn't recognise.

The governor on the screen gave the order, and they were marched to stand along one wall. It was nighttime and it was raining; harsh floodlights made airborne droplets, droplets on their hair, droplets on the binders, glow like static. Luke half wished it _was_ static.

That human with a crown of dark hair still looked unnervingly like Leia.

He took a deep breath. It was not Leia. He knew it was not Leia.

There was muttering—Luke couldn't tell if it was from the silent, anticipatory ballroom or the holo. The Rebels' shadows trembled on the damp duracrete.

A shout. A _crack_.

Holes bloomed in the Rebels' heads and Luke looked away before he saw any blood. He still heard the _thump_ of flesh on duracrete, though.

He thought he could hear high winds.

He didn't look up again until the holo had frozen and the applause began.

Deafening applause—like the applause he'd heard at the Death Star's unveiling. His gaze instinctively sought his father, though he glanced away again before he could note anything beyond the fact that he _wasn't_ clapping, heart hammering, throat _tight_—

He could hear high winds.

He looked at Palpatine—then rapidly looked away _again_, because the old man was _still staring at him_.

When his gaze landed on the viewscreen, though, he tensed.

It was frozen on the image of one of the Rebels. And it wasn't really surprising which one.

Luke squeezed his eyes shut, tried to get his breathing under control—

With the spill of blood hiding the shape of her features, her eyes closed, she looked even more like Leia.

He started forwards.

"Luke!" hissed a voice from somewhere, suddenly, near his elbow. He ignored it, shoving his way through the crowd. Mara shoved after him but it closed like a rock fall at his back and she couldn't get through in time.

No one was paying attention to him. They'd gone right back to mingling the moment the viewscreen went dark but Luke shoved through, made for and out of the vast double doors and _ran_—

"Skywalker!" Mara bellowed from the entrance but Luke had already turned a corner and vanished deeper into the Palace.

He didn't know how far away he was when he stopped.

Collapsed.

Pressed his knees to his face and bent over double in some alcove, behind some statue. Servants milled past, either not noticing him or pretending not to notice him.

That wasn't Leia. Leia wasn't dead—he would _know_ if Leia was dead, he'd _sense it_—

He tried to gasp for air, but there was something around his throat, yanking tighter and tighter and tighter—

And suddenly there was a hand on his shoulder.

A flesh hand. A gentle hand.

It wasn't Mara. He knew that immediately. The hand was too broad, too large—and he could _sense her_, anyway, casting her mind out to look for him, quite a way away.

Had he really run that far? It felt shorter—but also so much longer.

The hand was gone from his shoulder now; it was just one finger instead, tapping. And a voice.

Luke blinked at the face blocking the light from the alcove.

"Kid?"

That. . . didn't compute. Luke shook his head slowly; he felt like his whole body had been thrown into freezing water.

". . .you alright?"

There was another hand, now, hovering over his arm. Luke didn't resist when he pulled him from his alcove.

He tried to snap, "Evidently not," but it just came out weak. Matter-of-fact. Passive.

"Yeah. . . well." It was no Imperial accent speaking, Luke could tell that much. The hands were bare as well, not cased in the gloves stormtroopers wore. "I didn't know what else to say."

This. . . _man's_—Luke was pretty sure it was a man; these hands were human and his voice was low—mind was wide open, littered with all sorts of conflicting emotions: alarm, a smidgen of genuine concern, fear, and a general tension. It exacerbated Luke's headache just to peer in there, though he was amused to find that if cussing was an emotion, that would have been the most prominent.

Luke. . . almost wanted to laugh. He _did_ laugh. Then his throat tightened again and he coughed.

"Hey, hey. Take it easy." The man let Luke lean on him for a bit, then helped him stagger out of the alcove. They knocked the small statue on the way out; it rocked on its base, then the moment Luke collapsed to the floor of the well-carpeted corridor it crashed down as well. An amphibious creature lost an arm.

When Luke glanced at the brown, rugged face of his companion, he looked _even more _alarmed than before.

"Blast," he said. "Hope that wasn't expensive."

Luke bent over double and dissolved into a fit of giggles.

"Kid?" The man crouched next to him. "Calm down, I guess? Just. . . breathe?"

Luke kept laughing. He started crying, too, but tried to wipe them away on his cape before his companion could see them.

He breathed.

He didn't even realise he _had_ a headache until it eased.

His hands were still trembling. He tucked them together, against his sides, and when he looked up at the man next to him he realised he was on eye level with the collar of his grey uniform.

He'd done the buttons up unevenly, he noted.

"Who—" he tried to say, then cut him off. There were clipped footsteps behind him.

"Good. You found him." Mara came closer and Luke kept his gaze on the floor to avoid meeting her eyes. There was no need: she barely looked at him.

His companion scowled. It was amusing, the contrast between them—elegant, put-together Mara and the scruffy, steadfast man. Luke wondered what in the galaxy they could have in common.

"I found him," the man snapped. "What now?"

"_Now_, Solo, you show some respect."

"To you or to him? 'Cause he doesn't look that _bothered_—"

"Get up," Mara told Luke. "We're heading back to—"

"I'm not going back to that function," Luke said flatly, though he did push himself to his feet. Wobbled a bit, but stayed up.

Mara tilted her head. "I was going to say, back to your quarters," she said. "You still have to prepare for leaving tomorrow."

"I've _already_ prepared."

Mara nodded at Solo. "Now you've got another member of your entourage, you're not."

"I have an _entourage_?"

"Shut it, Skywalker, and get moving." She made to move away, then paused. "And this is Solo—"

"_Han Solo_," the man said fiercely.

Her lips twitched. "This is Captain Han Solo. Here for your security."

The Force screamed.

It wasn't a lie.

_Mara_, strangely enough, believed it. And there wasn't a threat here.

But something was wrong.

Luke studied Han Solo. He looked to be in his late twenties, worn and scarred, and—as he'd thought earlier—_scruffy_.

He didn't look like he'd spent a day of his life in an Imperial academy.

Luke said, "Interesting," and noted how Solo shifted awkwardly as he said it.

* * *

**Again, if you have any feedback or advice about presenting Luke's response to his trauma, please let me know (either in the reviews, or on my tumblr (username: _spell-cleaver_. Either would be fantastic.)**


	38. The Soul

**Yoda is a _little bitch_ to write, he gives me a headache, and not just because I have to figure out his speech pattern.**

* * *

"Reach out with your feelings, you must. Centre—"

"I _know_ how to meditate."

Yoda _hmphed. _"From the dark side, never has one returned. Of such training, no knowledge I have. Therefore, re-teach you I must."

Leia grumbled, "I don't quite follow your logic."

She opened her eyes again in her frustration—her _impatience_—and caught him watching her, head tilted curiously.

"To let go of the dark, you do not want," he observed sadly. "Unless you do, turn to the light, you cannot."

"Glad to know that not even my _teacher_ believes in me." She ground her teeth and leaned back. The floor of the hangar was dusty and filthy, but the dirt was already all over her trousers; might as well get it all over her back and in her hair as well. "If this _letting go of the dark side_ has never been done before, do _you_ honestly think I can do it, now?"

He looked at her. Pressed his lips together.

"No," he said. "I do not."

Well.

Fine then.

She clenched her teeth and was dismayed to find her vision blurring. She bit her lip.

"Fine."

She got to her feet. Wasted a moment to brush off her back and legs but then she'd summoned her lightsaber to hand from the corner and was _marching_, the hangar doors hissing open as she approached—

"But if anyone can, I believe," his voice stopped her, "a Skywalker can."

She gritted her teeth again. "I am not my family. I am not— _Luke_ is the one who you want, if anyone can find this _peace_, this _clarity_, this... _goodness_ you're talking about then it's _him_! I'm—"

She froze. Padmé's words, after Leia had been exchanging pleasantries with Saw kriffing Gerrera on the way back from Naboo, rang in her mind.

She said bitterly, "I'm my father's daughter."

She shook her head. "I'm no use to you _Jedi_ at all."

And then Yoda—inexplicably enough—smiled.

"Your mother's daughter too, hmm?"

Leia's shoulders slumped. "Not really," she whispered, "no."

"More so than you realise, I think. Yes." She heard the _tap-tap-tap_ of his cane against the ground as he hobbled towards her. "But if not, no matter, it is. Your father—great, powerful Jedi was he also."

She turned back to him. "My father led the Purges."

He smiled up at her, and tapped her shins with his cane. Her gaze caught on the tape around the centre of it and hysterical laughter bubbled in her throat. "A minor detail, that is."

She laughed again. Tears leaked out from under her lashes.

She bent down. Kneeled in front of him, so they were eye to eye, and then her vision blurred. _He_ blurred, into a swathe of green like the fields of Naboo, and she felt like a foreigner.

She whispered, "I can't do this."

He laid a hand on her knee. "What, can you not do?"

"_This_." She gestured around—at her lightsaber, her training gear, the crates she'd been levitating in the corner. "_Any_ of this. Luke—"

"With us eventually, will be. Always in motion, the future is, but of that I am sure."

She stared at him. "Rescued?"

"No, I do not think."

His lips twisted, then, and she picked up something she didn't want to think about.

She swallowed. "You don't think he'll be able to resist Palpatine."

"Said, I have: always in motion is the future. And very wrong have I been before."

Breathing deeply, she tried again. "I still can't do it. My father—"

"Leia." How such a grumpy little gremlin managed to be so easy to confide in, she had no idea. But he was. "Your father, you are not. Make his mistakes—for your. . . loved ones. . . and the galaxy—you need not. And return to the light, you must, if you are to help your brother."

She breathed deeply some more. Tried not to draw comparisons to the steady (and steadying) rasp of her father's respirator. "I have to turn to the light."

He nodded.

She repeated, "I _have to_. To save Luke."

"Yes."

Fresh tears welled up. "It's impossible," she whispered. It was impossible, impossible, and Luke would die or continue to suffer that _excruciating_ pain because she failed— "You said so yourself. We both know it's impossible."

He nodded sadly.

Hummed.

Tilted his head to the side, and tapped his stick on the ground.

"And that, I think," he said, "is why we fail."

* * *

Leia left that training session with a lot to think about.

There were always tasks to do on a base, but no one had assigned her one and she didn't go offering—instead, she took herself and her pensive thoughts to the back of base, to sit among old farm fields long since overgrown and. . . try to meditate. Properly, without any teacher or pressure or desire hanging over her head. She closed her eyes and _focused_.

There was someone nearby.

Someone. . . quiet. In their thoughts, certainly, but also in their footfalls. She could sense them approaching, approaching _her_, and though their thoughts were quiet they held no menace.

Leia didn't open her eyes again until the newcomer had settled down in front of her, loose grey trousers creasing against the dried out stalks on the ground. The wind tugged at a few strands in her immaculate ponytail and waved them around her face. It was Qi'ra.

She smiled when she caught Leia's eye, then tugged her jacket off to reveal a black, short-sleeved top underneath and folded it in her lap. The wind tugged at that too, but she clasped her hands around it and closed her eyes. Leia followed suit.

"Meditating is a good idea," Qi'ra said finally. Leia could tell by her voice that that faint smile was still on her face. "It's too easy to get too caught up in the stress and urgency of it all."

"You learned meditation?" Leia murmured in reply, though she doubted it was of the Jedi or Sith kind. Qi'ra's mind, while as shielded as any ex-spy from Palpatine's palace would be, seemed to hold an amount of Force-sensitivity that, while being somewhat higher than the average, was nowhere near the point of being worth training.

Qi'ra frowned gracefully; though Leia's eyes were closed, she could hear it in: "One of my old bosses. A wannabe Sith, leading a criminal gang. I was his favoured lieutenant. He wanted to make sure I remained. . . _intact_ during the horrors of my role there."

"You worked for Crimson Dawn?" Leia asked.

Qi'ra chuckled. "They said you were smart. Yes—Maul was. . . not a kind teacher. I got out as soon as Palpatine cracked down on his organisation and Amidala found me. I've worked for her ever since."

"You were one of her spies in the Palace?" Leia guessed.

"No. I was elsewhere on Coruscant, but I think Palpatine got wind of the fact that I'd been a lackey of Maul's and threw me in prison somewhere he could keep an eye on me—oversee my. . ." She swallowed, and her voice lost some of that smooth charm as she spat, ". . ._interrogation_. Crimson Dawn didn't just collapse with Maul, after all."

"I know," Leia murmured. "We used it to infiltrate the Palace. Or rather, the fact that they still sell slaves to the Empire."

"I heard about that. Clever—your entire plan was. And executed well."

"We didn't save my brother."

Qi'ra deflated. "Yes," she said, "that was a shame."

There was something, something in her voice, that had Leia's eyes flashing open and she snapped, "It _is_ a shame. He's a great fighter, a great asset. He was the one who killed Maul."

"I know, I'm sorry if it sounded like—" She paused, eyebrows gliding up, tilting her head slightly. "He was?"

Leia. . . regretted bringing it up. "Maul's assassination, three years ago. . . That was our first formal mission. Luke struck the killing blow."

"I see." There was something unreadable in Qi'ra's eyes, but Leia couldn't help but read a little viciousness into her tone as well. "Thank you, then." She smirked. "I'm in your debt."

"I'd rather just forget it."

Qi'ra creased her brows slightly. She shivered, though the wind hadn't picked up significantly and the sun still shone, and tugged her jacket back on. She was brushing her hair out from under her collar when she asked, "Why? If I may enquire."

Leia bit out, "I'm supposed to be letting go. Of everything. Turning away from the dark side."

Qi'ra frowned. "But the dark side helped you succeed before." She said the words with the familiarity of one who'd heard a great many lectures about _the power and pragmatism of the dark_ over the years. "Why give it up?"

"Because it's Palpatine's. It serves him, and he expects it of me. We _lost _before." She closed her eyes and reassumed her meditation position. "I won't lose again."

"I understand." Her tone said otherwise. Leia ignored her; she was _set on this path_, she couldn't afford to believe it was impossible or wrong, and nothing any ex-acolyte of a failed Sith Lord like _Maul_ could say would convince her otherwise.

Then Qi'ra said, "Have you got a new lightsaber, then?"

Leia stilled, her muscles tense. "What?"

Qi'ra gestured to the lightsaber at her hip, the dark metal it was made of. "If you're leaving everything behind, did you get a new lightsaber? I imagine that might be a symbol—to yourself and everyone else—that you're changing."

Leia frowned. She. . . wasn't wrong.

Her father had given her this lightsaber.

"No," she said finally, "I haven't."

Qi'ra nodded her head. "My apologies for intruding then." Her wrist-mounted comlink beeped and she glanced at it, pushing herself to her feet. She brushed off her trousers and soil fell from the folds to patter on the ground. "I have to go—enjoy your meditation."

Leia nearly scoffed at the platitude, but held herself back. She just nodded in acknowledgement and closed her eyes again.

Reached out with the Force, and sensed it when Qi'ra finally re-entered the base.

Only then did she feel for her lightsaber and bring it to hover at her eye level. A feather-light brush, a touch in the right place, and it disassembled smoothly. Pieces slotted in and out of each other before they all hung before her, orbiting the crystal at the centre in a loose cylinder.

The crystal, glinting an iridescent red even without the sunlight that edged towards dusk, _screamed_.

It was in agony.

Until Leia reached out and closed her hand tightly around it.

It _shattered_.

The energy discharge from the destruction of a kyber crystal was massive, compared to its size. Leia knew this. Even her stranglehold on the Force around it couldn't stop to surge of fire and heat. She jerked back and cried out.

She stared at her palm—the charred, angry burn there.

Then she looked back at the crystal.

All that was left of it was a cloud of shimmering dust, like stars in a nebula, falling like rain.

* * *

Yoda was deep in his meditation when he sensed Obi-Wan come. His ears twitched. "Late, you are."

"My apologies, Master," Obi-Wan said. He shimmered into existence next to where Yoda was meditating on the hangar's hard floor and took up his own meditation pose, as pointless as _feeling the Force_ might be to someone who, essentially, _was_ the Force. "Coruscant is. . . difficult to manifest on. I was spending most of my energy focused on assisting Luke, and the darkness surrounding him is a veil that is difficult to pierce."

"Close, Sidious holds him," Yoda observed in a neutral voice, his eyes still closed. He felt. . . _old_, in this moment, in a way that had been steadily creeping up on him from the moment he'd been there to watch the Clone Wars begin. Thinking about a youngling or padawan's suffering without being able to do anything about it was an exhausting exercise. "Difficult to reach, he always would be. Known this, we always have."

"Yes, master, but now he _wants_ to be reached. It is easier—and it will become even easier once he is away from Coruscant, with Tarkin, and I can try to teach him to turn towards the light some more—"

"Hm."

Obi-Wan faltered, tilting his head. His old friend looked old, very old, as well. Even if he'd only spent seven long years on Tatooine before Vader had undone all of their meticulously laid plans, grief and the desert sands had taken their toll. "Master?"

He twitched his ear and grunted. "Travelling with Tarkin, you say he is?"

"Yes, Master."

"Given into the dark side, he has, then? The Empire, he has rejoined?"

"_No_." Obi-Wan sounded aghast at the idea, and despite the wrinkles on his face, that made him seem young. Even with the Sith having only risen again a mere thirty years earlier, Yoda had seen far, far more of sentient cruelty and vices in his centuries of life than Obi-Wan had in his mere decades. "No—he. . ."

Yoda hummed, and waited. His scrappy, threadbare robes lay heavy around his shoulders like a mantle.

"He's taking an insane risk," Obi-Wan explained, "but he believes wholeheartedly—and I agree with him—that the only way he can escape Palpatine is by letting Palpatine think he's on his side. He's pretended to rejoin the Empire, and reassumed his role as spy until such a time that he can escape, and come here."

"I see."

Obi-Wan leaned forward. "What is it, Master? What do you sense?"

And then Yoda hesitated.

But— "Lost, that boy is."

Obi-Wan nodded vehemently. "Misguided and lost, and he's confused, he needs guidance—"

"_Lost_. Lost to us, to the darkness. Lost. . ." His lips twitched again. ". . .to his sister."

"Master. . ."

"Sidious's creatures, the Skywalker twins are," Yoda declared, opening his eyes and fixing Obi-Wan with a stare that would have had any gaggle of younglings or masters nodding their heads and chorusing _yessir_. "With us, young Leia is, so perhaps train her I can, to do what we could not. But with the Sith, her brother is. Good and loyal to us right now, he may be, but sink his claws into him, Sidious will. Fake the darkness, one cannot; feed on him, it will, until he is consumed."

"_Master. . ._"

"A servant of evil, young Skywalker will become. Him also, she will have to destroy."

Obi-Wan shook his head. "She won't do it."

"Then fail in her duty, she will."

"Master." Obi-Wan's tone was one Yoda had often heard him use on his unorthodox padawan, and Yoda's ears flattened in offence. "Luke is a _child_. _Leia_ is a child. They are each the only thing the other has, has ever had—"

"Let go of attachments, young Skywalker must, if she is to become a Jedi."

"Luke _doesn't deserve this_. He has sacrificed himself this far for this cause, suffered so much—"

"Lecture me about suffering, do not, Obi-Wan. And let your feelings of failure over Anakin cloud your judgement, do not."

"I'm not—"

"Failed Anakin, you did. Fail Leia, you must not."

"_I won't fail Luke either_." Obi-Wan's voice cracked. "He's _relying_ on me."

Yoda shook his head. "Continue to visit him, you must not. Here, you are needed. To his fate, leave him."

Obi-Wan straightened up. "No. I won't do that."

Yoda _hmphed_. "Qui-Gon's defiance I sense in you."

Obi-Wan said nothing. Just smiled.

"Very well," Yoda conceded with a frown. "Waste your energy on a lost boy, you will. A fool, you are."

"He will not let you down, Master. He will return to the light, and to Leia."

"_Leia_." Yoda got to his feet and hobbled over with his stick, grunting at the way it flexed and bent after that girl had sliced it in half. "Stay away from my student, you will. Speak to her, pass messages to her, you will not."

Obi-Wan reared back in the face of three feet of angry green troll coming at him with a stick. "_What_? Master—communicating with Leia, knowing that she's alright, would be the most useful thing for Luke—"

"And the least useful thing for Leia, it would be."

"I beg to differ."

"To let go, she must learn, if to kill her father and the Emperor she must. Too hung up on her brother, she already is."

"He's half of her soul."

"Learn to live without him, she must."

Obi-Wan said, "This is why Padmé refused to let you train her children from birth. Why she insisted they be kept together, rather than apart."

"And kept together they were. _Kidnapped_ together, they were. Both of them, Vader found."

He insisted nonetheless: "Padmé was right. It was what was best for them."

"_Hmph_." Yoda rapped his stick on the floor. "A fool, Amidala was, and is. That there was light in Vader, she believed? _Believes_? I think not."

Obi-Wan. . . swallowed and nodded at that.

"Speak to her of young Skywalker's insane plan either, do not," Yoda ordered. "Hope, she will have, and when inevitably disappointed she is, worse, things will be."

"_Master. . ._"

"Cruel, this is, I know," he said softly, "but necessary, to defeat the Sith and restore the Jedi." Then he added, "And to keep Leia safe."

Obi-Wan pressed his lips together.

"Very well," he conceded the negotiations. "I shall follow your wishes. I will not tell Leia or Padmé of any of this—"

"To Luke also, say nothing of what occurs here, or when he is again Sidious's, so too will the knowledge be."

Obi-Wan deflated. "He needs to know that his sister is alright," he pleaded.

"My decision, I will not change."

He sighed. "Very well then, Master," he said, and there was something like steel and ice in his voice. "I suspect this will be the last time I am able to or need to manifest myself to you like this, so farewell, my old friend." He smiled a little. "I wish you luck with Leia, and promise you: Luke _will_ succeed."

Yoda inclined his head. "Goodbye, Obi-Wan."

He flickered out, like a broken hologram.

Yoda returned to his meditation.

* * *

Less than a mile away, within the very confines of that building, Ahsoka Tano stirred.

The first thing she noticed was the faint blue light washing everything in her bunkroom. She must've forgotten to switch a holo off or something—

Then she moved her gaze up and nearly screamed at the man standing over her.

She sat up so fast she smacked her montrals against the top bunk and hissed her pain, but she was also _gaping_, because—

"Hello, Ahsoka," her old master's master said to her.

She shook her head in disbelief. "What— You—" She worked her mouth. "You're _dead_."

He spread his arms. He was transparent, she noted, slightly hysterically; he was transparent, and blue, and had apparently got into her room without unlocking the door which meant—

"I am," he said. "My old master, Qui-Gon, taught me a way to live on after death. But that's not important right now."

"_Not important_—!"

"Ahsoka," he said gravely, making to perch on the edge of her bed. "I need you to listen. Yoda didn't want me to tell anyone this, but someone has to know, so it must be you."

"It concerns Luke."


	39. More Decision, More Doubt

Bail Organa was visiting Dantooine.

His cover story, if necessary, was that he was on planet for humanitarian purposes, running one of his famous mercy missions for the farmers on planet who were having yet another poor harvest. Though the plan was that no Imperials ever found out he'd come here at all, with an inward journey so convoluted it would take a miracle to track it.

Leia thought his fancy clothes and diplomatic air made him stick out like a sore thumb amidst all the dusty and busy Rebels, but no one asked her opinion and she didn't offer it.

She was just out of medical the next day, after the check up on how her hand was healing up from the burn, when Padmé asked her to come to her office. Apparently they had something important to tell her about.

She flexed her hand—it was healing well, the bacta patches were doing their job—then knocked twice. Padmé's voice came through: "Come in."

She entered. She didn't look at Organa, beyond a brief look of sceptical appraisal.

He was smiling at her exasperatedly when he sighed. She could tell.

Padmé sighed too, but tried to be light-hearted—_try _being the operative word. "Sit down, Leia. Bail brings us news about the situation on Coruscant."

Leia opened her mouth to say something acerbic, then closed it again, taking a deep breath and sitting in the second chair positioned in front of Padmé's desk.

She had to give him a chance. He deserved a chance.

He was still smiling—she felt _belittled_—but said sadly, "Nothing positive, I'm afraid." He coughed. "Especially not about. . ."

"Spit it out."

"_Leia_."

Leia pinched her lips together and looked down at her entwined hands, sitting in her lap. Her shoulders were tensed, her hackles raised. She felt like. . .

She felt like she was standing in front of _Tarkin_ again, with the calculating way his gaze was on her, the moves to try and charm her in a guiding, mentoring sort of way, and she _hated it_.

Or even. . .

She felt like she was standing in front of _him_.

Even without the stench of darkness. Even without the blatant possession and superiority in his tone. Palpatine was a politician, and so was Bail Organa.

Padmé. . .

At least Padmé loved her.

But her father hated politicians too, she supposed, so. . .

"My apologies," she ground out, but only for Padmé. Only for Padmé.

"It's alright. We're all under strain." His smile was winning, and though it warmed her a tiny bit—she _felt_ the warmth, the genuine forgiveness, in the Force—she still thought he was annoying.

"But the news I have to bring is certainly not news you will want to hear."

He paused. Leia glanced at Padmé to find them both looking at her, and made a sharp gesture with her hand.

He continued, "There was a function for the Imperial Court and other favoured officers on Coruscant recently. It was celebrating the capture and execution of the leaders of the Rebel cell on Corellia."

Padmé winced. "That was a major setback for the Alliance."

"It was." Organa nodded patiently. "That was why they were celebrating it. It was a perfectly ordinary function, nothing new—but Lord Vader was in attendance."

Leia ground her teeth at the mere thought of him. Images reared up unbidden, of a dark shadow and a darker voice asking questions she—_Luke_—couldn't answer—

She would _kill_ him if she saw him again.

Even if it was not the Jedi way.

"That was the oddity that caused my sources to take notice. Vader very rarely attends formal functions—as I'm sure you know—and he doesn't have the patience for them. Let alone does he _talk_ to anyone. But he spoke to Tarkin's companion, a young man who seems to have been taken under his wing as an aide."

Leia squeezed her eyes shut, and _knew_— "Luke?"

Organa confirmed grimly, "Luke."

Padmé, ever the diplomat, asked carefully, "And what does this mean?"

"We believe. . ." Organa took a breath. "In light of Master Yoda's concerns about a Force user's ability to 'resist' the 'dark side', as well as your brother's very recent defection. . . we believe that he's been compromised."

The words were half-expected, but they fell on Leia's ears like mallets. It _stung_.

"My _brother_," she hissed, shoving herself to her feet; even standing up, she was barely taller than Organa, "is _not _a _traitor_!"

He held out a placating hand and she smacked it away. "Leia, please."

"He's _not_!" She turned on her heel and made for the door; just before Padmé cried out for her to stay, she turned again and kept pacing. "He _wouldn't_. He would _not_ go back to Palpatine—that's not how torture _works_—I _don't_ believe it, it's _ridiculous_—and if he was really at that function, acting like an Imperial, then that means he has a plan!"

"He wasn't _acting like _one, Leia. He _was_ one."

"He _wasn't_!" she shot back. "He _has a plan_—if he's at functions, presumably unharmed, then that means he's out of the cells, less injured. It'll be easier for him to escape! You'll see—when he makes contact with us, asking for extraction or _telling us he's escaped on his own because no one in this suns-blasted Rebellion could rescue him_, _you'll see_!"

Organa set his jaw. "Leia," he snapped, "_your brother has betrayed you_. Denial won't help anyone."

"It's not denial. It's common sense."

"Palpatine is persuasive and manipulative, I'm afraid. Your father fell into his grasp long ago, and now he's managed to have your brother return to him. There is no use screaming about it."

"Bail," Padmé admonished.

"Luke has _not_ returned to him, and _he never would_," Leia reiterated stubbornly. She clenched her fists and, at a pleading, _pained_ look from Padmé, sat down again. Her nails embedded in her palms; her healing burn stung. "He _tortured_ him. That's not how torture works."

"Perhaps he didn't go back to Palpatine," Padmé offered lamely. Leia glared at her too—for even _entertaining_ this ridiculous idea, let alone believing it. But of course she didn't know how fiercely Luke would never do that. She didn't know Luke at all. "Perhaps he went back to Vader—you told me that he used to idolise your father."

Bail grimaced. "I'm not sure. Apparently things were very frosty between them at the f—"

Leia interrupted, "_Vader tortured him too_."

They stared at her.

Padmé said, very weakly, "What?"

Leia pressed her lips together and nodded gravely.

"I dreamed about it," she whispered. "My father was torturing my brother, and it was as real as the wound on my hand right now."

Padmé glanced at her hand briefly, a question in the furrow of her brow, but Leia left it unanswered.

"Luke is not a traitor," she said. "That is as real as the wound on my hand, too."

"I believe her," a voice said behind her.

Leia's head whipped round, shocked out of her quiet fervour. Ahsoka was standing there, the door slightly open behind her. She must've been really distracted not to notice her come in.

Ahsoka smiled supportively at her, and it was a thousand times warmer than any of Bail Organa's practised sympathy.

"Trust Skyguy Junior, for now," she said. "Give him time. It doesn't have to be long, perhaps a few weeks at best. But if Leia's right—and as the only person in the room other than her who's _met_ him, I think she is, and I also think she's the most likely to be—then just _give him time_. He'll contact us himself with all the answers soon enough."

Organa only nodded neatly, but a weight seemed to roll off Padmé's shoulders. She dragged a hand over her face.

"Alright," she said. "Good. Alright. Let's do that."

Ahsoka, when Leia mouthed _thank you_ at her, only smiled mysteriously. But, Leia decided, that was something to think about for tomorrow.

* * *

The next morning, Luke found himself throwing together various bags of clothes and throwing them onto the servant Tarkin had sent to shuttle them onto the Star Destroyer _Sovereign II_. Hearing the _II_ made him smile to himself every time; Luke and Leia hadn't been on Mustafar during that. . . _incident_ where Tarkin had had the first _Sovereign_ destroyed by the _Ghost _crew, but they'd certainly laughed at him about it later.

The servant Tarkin had sent loaded all their bags—Han's bag was a ratty little thing, unlikely to hold his uniform let alone any off-duty clothes; Mara's was small and compact and no doubt deadly; Luke had multiple—and gave him a sharp nod before he pushed the hover trolley down the corridor again. The door to Luke's grand quarters hissed shut.

Luke took a seat on one of the futons in the room adjacent to his sleeping quarters and made to tug on his boots.

"What time are we estimated to be leaving?" he asked Mara.

She gave him an unimpressed look. "Now. Tarkin and His Majesty want you to settle into your quarters on the _Sovereign II _before we jump to hyperspace, so we're heading up now."

Luke smiled. tried to, at least: he failed, but he did manage a diplomatic twist of the lips. "Lead the way, then."

* * *

There was an officer waiting for them when the shuttle set down in the belly of the Star Destroyer, and Luke watched his young face crease with confusion when he saw someone as small and unassuming as Luke stride out, accompanied by two clearly heavily armed bodyguards. He expected _he _looked even more pathetic in context: Han looked rugged enough to be experienced, Mara's death glare was a force to be reckoned with; between them, he looked like a thin ray of sunlight clad in black, bruised with sleeplessness.

"My lord," the ensign greeted nervously, and Luke tried not to wince at the address. That wasn't him. "I have been instructed by Grand Moff Tarkin to escort you to the bridge and your quarters—"

"Very well," Luke cut him off, "to the quarters, then."

The ensign paused, horrified. "My lord—"

"_Sir _will do."

"Yes, m— yes, sir. I was instructed to take you to—"

"The bridge and my quarters, yes. In that particular order?"

The ensign hesitated.

Luke said, "The quarters. Now."

The ensign scurried away.

Luke let his shoulders slump and followed.

It wasn't too far a walk from the hangar, as far as large Star Destroyers went, though they had to take three turbolifts. When they finally arrived, the ensign handed out the code cylinders he'd had peeking out of his front pocket—one to each of them.

"These are the quarters assigned to you and your entourage, sir," he said, then opened the door.

Luke stepped in, cast a brief glance around, then looked at the ensign. "Leave. Come back in half a standard hour to escort us to the bridge."

Clearly the ensign thought _that_ was too different from his set of orders too, from the way he swallowed, but he nodded dutifully—"Yes, sir"—and turned on his heel. Luke watched him retreat down the corridor, and out of sight.

Then he looked back at Han and Mara. "Let's settle in then, shall we?"

The quarters weren't large by planetary standards, but they were vast by spaceship standards. There was one bedroom for each of them—Luke's, of course, being the largest—and a small study, presumably for Luke once Tarkin had assigned him tasks to fulfil in his. . . new position. There was a communal living space too, with two sofas and a holoscreen and a table, nicely carpeted in a _vibrant_ Imperial grey. Their bags had been dumped on the floor between the sofas.

Han whistled. "This is fancy."

"Try not to feel too out of place," Luke teased quietly, and instantly regretted it when an angry flush crawled up Han's neck.

Han was not Leia, and he was hiding something. He couldn't talk to him like that.

But then Han rubbed the back of his neck and made a sound that was half-scoff, half-laugh. "This is a far cry from Corellia, for sure."

"Oh?" Luke asked, before Han could realise what he'd said and backtrack. "You're from Corellia?"

Han tensed up. Luke saw when Mara noticed it: her green eyes narrowed, head tilting so slightly that the bun her red hair was pulled back into barely shifted.

"Yeah," he said finally, with a small laugh. "Born and raised. Joined the Imperial Army when I was nineteen."

That. . . wasn't a lie. As off as it felt, it wasn't a lie.

"Always dreamed of being a foot soldier?" Luke asked, slight. . . surprise in his voice. He really needed to learn how to control his emotions.

Han _did_ outwardly scoff at that. "Nah. Wanted to be a pilot—"

"You and me both."

"—but got kicked out of the academy for having a mind of my own."

Luke grimaced. "That sounds familiar. I wondered how you'd come so far in Imperial ranks with an attitude like yours."

"Hey, kid, no need to be rude." Han puffed himself up to hide his nervousness.

Luke backtracked, ignoring Mara's gaze on him. "It wasn't intended to be. The Imperial forces need more independent thinkers. People who are willing to use their brains to challenge what they know is wrong," he slowed his voice down, every word pointed, "and change it for the good of the many, rather than let outdated traditions and old men rule the future."

Mara was no longer looking at him.

But Han was.

Luke shrugged, and continued: "And because some rules are just inconvenient for everyone, and they deserve to be broken."

Han whistled. "I think, kid," he said, "we might get along."

Mara snapped, "That's enough."

Luke raised an eyebrow at her but she just stalked forwards, summoning her own pack to hand and tossing his three at him with the Force; he barely caught them in time, letting one hover about his foot.

He ignored Han's stare.

"Let's go unpack, then that ensign will be back to take us to the bridge to report to Tarkin. As we should have already done." She glared. "Skywalker, get on with it."

Luke laughed, and hoisted up his bags. "Yes, ma'am."

Han was still staring between the two of them—the floating bags, mouthing _Skywalker_ when his gaze landed on Luke again.

Just as Luke passed him, he heard him mutter, _"Shavit_."

* * *

Padmé said, "Thank you all for coming on such short notice."

The briefing room was cramped with Rebels and Partisans alike. Leia shifted on her feet, accidentally bumping shoulders with both Erso and Qi'ra on either side of her, shooting them apologetic looks. Jyn only smirked slightly, though Qi'ra nodded reassuringly.

Padmé looked down at the holotable and pressed a button, bringing up a holo of an industrial moon of some insignificant planet. "This is Cymoon One. It's one of the Empire's main sources of raw materials, and their most successful one."

Intrigued, Leia leaned forward. Padmé caught her eye over the head of an Ugnaught leaning in to listen and continued, a faint smile on her face: "We intend it to be the target of our next mission."

"A joint mission?" Jyn called out.

Padmé paused. "If Saw permits it, yes. Another joint operation between the Partisans and the wider Rebellion."

Jyn rested back on her heels, nodding.

"The Empire is building something massive," Padmé continued. "We know about it, have known about it for a few months"—another glance at Leia, another smile—"but now is the first chance we've had to strike at its construction. Cymoon One is having its quotas doubled to keep up with the demand, and once the visiting officials leave the moon, we'll have the means, and the opportunity, to strike."

She pressed a few more buttons and the holo expanded to zoom in on a simulated shuttle approaching a base and landing pad. It landed, and three figures stepped out.

Padmé said, "Our initial strategy is. . ."

* * *

"Leia," her mother said, before she could follow everyone else out the door at the end of the briefing. "Wait."

Leia turned dutifully, and held her place on one side of the table. The simulated explosion in the holo kept looping and she found it oddly fascinating to watch: the way the base and factory disintegrated and shattered outwards in fire and stone, over, and over, and over. . .

Her mother moved around the table to lay a cool hand on her shoulder. "Leia?"

She jerked her gaze away. "Right."

"Are you alright?"

Leia swallowed and nodded, ignoring the way her shoulders were bouncing slightly. "Yeah. Of course."

Padmé raised an eyebrow.

"I'm _fine_."

"Are you sure you want to go on this mission?"

Leia glanced back at the holo—at the base assembling and dissembling itself on loop. Padmé slapped a button and it vanished.

"Leia?"

"I _definitely_ want to go on this mission."

Padmé cocked her head. Hummed, and realised, "You want to stop thinking about—"

"I want to be _useful_."

"_And_ distracted."

"_Useful_."

"If you have faith in him, Leia, I have faith in him," Padmé said quietly.

"You're his _mother_. You should have faith in him anyway. You should know him well enough for that."

Padmé didn't comment on that. Leia was glad; she didn't know what she would've done if she had.

Instead Padmé said: "No lightsaber?"

Leia glanced down at her hip—at the empty ring on her belt missing an accessory. "Yeah. I mean, no. No lightsaber."

"Where is it?"

Leia shrugged. "I destroyed it."

Padmé raised her eyebrows and opened her mouth slightly. "Oh?"

Leia shrugged again. Tilted her chin in a way that was halfway between a nod and a shake of her head. "It was a Sith's lightsaber."

"I see." Padmé didn't press further, but she did say, "Will you need another?"

Leia. . . frowned. "Probably. I don't have Barriss Offee's lightsaber from our attack on the Palace anymore, but if I can find another. . ."

"Barriss Offee?" Padmé looked alarmed. "She was—"

"Yeah. Heard all about her."

Padmé nodded. "I understand." Then, tentatively— "Why can't you build one?"

Leia flexed her right hand—the burns had almost entirely healed from a few days ago, but the tightening of new skin distracted her briefly. "What?"

"Your lightsaber. Couldn't you build it?"

"Probably." Leia frowned. "I've never built a lightsaber before."

"_Never?_"

Leia said, affronted, "Our lightsabers were badges of honour. We _earned_ them, not _built_ them. Luke and I received them as a gift from F— from Vader," she stumbled, "after we'd finished our training."

"I see," Padmé said.

Leia didn't like that tone of voice. It sounded too much like disappointment. "I can probably build a lightsaber."

Padmé dipped her head. "I wouldn't presume to tell you what to do."

"I could do it."

"I believe you."

They both paused.

"Have you had lunch yet?" Padmé asked abruptly.

Leia shook her head. "No."

Padmé held out a hand. "Would you like to have lunch with me, then?"

Leia hesitated, took her hand and nodded.

* * *

The bridge of the _Sovereign II_ was far, far less impressive considering the last Star Destroyer Luke had been on had been the _Executor_. But it _was_ large, and _somewhat_ impressive when Luke followed the ensign in to the view of dozens of officers working on their terminals, and Tarkin presiding over all of them like some messiah.

"Good," Tarkin said shortly when he saw them. Luke sensed Han's distaste for the man skyrocket, and had to stifle his grin. "You're here."

His irritation was evident. Luke smiled sweetly and faux-eagerly, bringing himself to attention. "At your service, Governor."

"I'd expect you to be."

Luke barely restrained from rolling his eyes. "Is there anything—"

"No. I will give you a brief tour of the important areas of the ship, such as this bridge, my office, other places you will be expected to be familiar with. The rest of the ship you are expected to investigate yourself, or get someone else to show you."

Luke hadn't stopped smiling. "Understood, sir."

Tarkin narrowed his eyes. "I don't appreciate sycophancy."

"I didn't think you would, sir."

Tarkin glared. "I don't appreciate _mockery_ either, or you will be sent straight back to Coruscant."

Luke bit his lip and forced himself to glance at the floor.

Tarkin leaned it to hiss, "I do not trust you yet, no matter what His Majesty may say on your behalf. If I discover that your behaviour is a result of treason rather than sheer childishness, I trust you understand exactly who you will answer to."

Luke opened his mouth to speak, saw the twitch in Tarkin's jaw, the minute raise of his eyebrow. . . then lowered his head. "Understood, Grand Moff."

"I do prefer _Governor_," Tarkin informed him, but smiled thinly in a very Palpatine-like way. "Now, I'll lead you to the places you ought to familiarise yourself with, as my aide."

His change in tone surprised Luke. _The lash and the lure_, he thought.

Luke glanced at Mara and Han, both scowling—what at this time, he had no clue—and tilted his head forwards. "We're coming, Governor."

* * *

The tour was dull—Luke _knew_ how a Star Destroyer was laid out; was _intimately familiar_ with them—but useful. Not in what Tarkin was saying, but in how he said it.

Tarkin, Luke was starting to think, was far, far more predictable than Palpatine.

After viewing the bridge (in excruciating detail), the secondary bridge, the main hangars, the room Luke had been assigned for exercise and lightsaber skills, they entered his office. It was a drab place, reflective of the typical brutal nature of Eriadu's culture. Looking around the few trinkets Tarkin had from his homeworld—a hunter's pelt of some veermok; a blocky, monochrome painting of a man in military uniform; and a string of medals made of some flinty stone—Luke couldn't help but grimace. Rather than making Tarkin seem like more of a living, breathing human being, they just made him seem like less of one.

Tarkin pulled out his heavy, unnecessarily large chair from behind his desk and sat in it. "This is my office."

Luke could see that.

"This"—he slammed his hand down on a stack of datapads to the right of his desk—"is where I expect you to put your reports. If you need to speak to me directly, do so, but do not interrupt."

"Yes, sir."

"Now—"

The comm on the desk began to blink. Tarkin curled his lip, glanced down at the caller ID—

And his lip uncurled.

"Out," he ordered immediately. "Daklan will show you the rest; _I_ must take this. Return in one standard hour."

Luke wasn't about to put up a fight about being allowed to leave Tarkin's presence. "Yes, Governor."

* * *

They did return one hour later. Luke knocked tentatively at the door, then pushed it open at the sharp "Come in," that sounded immediately.

When Tarkin looked up at him, he was smiling.

Luke did not like that at all.

Tarkin lay the datapad he was holding flat on the table and gestured to the seat opposite his desk. "Sit down, boy. We have new orders."

"New orders, sir?" Luke asked, though he did as he was bid without questioning it.

"Yes." That unnerving smile widened as he pressed a button on the side of the datapad and a holo flickered up. A holo of a spherical object, with a dish in the side. . .

"I see you recognise it," Tarkin said. "As I'm sure you remember from the Empire Day unveiling at Kuat, Project Stardust is under my jurisdiction—once it is complete, I will be taking control of it on the Emperor's behalf."

Luke had to wrestle his face into indifference. _Tarkin?_

_Tarkin_ was going to have control of that. . . _thing_?

It— it made sense. But. . .

_Tarkin?_

The Rebellion _needed_ to destroy it.

Tarkin, a _kriffing sadist_, could not be given access to a weapon with the firepower to destroy entire planets—

But nor could Palpatine. Nor could anyone.

But they would.

Which meant. . .

"The purpose of this trip we are undertaking through hyperspace this very moment is to visit Cymoon One the site of—"

"The Empire greatest producer of industrial materials, I know."

Tarkin narrowed his eyes. "I said," he bit out haughtily, "not to interrupt me."

Luke swallowed. "My. . . apologies, sir."

"Nevertheless, you are correct," Tarkin continued. "It is a vital source of resources. Their quotas have doubled in the months since Kuat, as the Emperor has ordered an acceleration on Project Stardust—an acceleration which its director has _failed_ _to_ _meet_, but that is irrelevant for the moment—and Director Vilrein has proven incapable of keeping up. Our original plan was to visit there and. . . motivate her workers."

Luke swallowed again. "I see." A look. "Sir."

"However," Tarkin continued, "I have just received word from the Emperor himself that Amidala is planning an attack on Cymoon shortly after we arrive."

A moment, then Luke dared, "So. . . are we going there to stop them, sir?"

"No." Tarkin twisted his lips. "His Majesty has stated that he would prefer two of his most useful servants merely shore up the defences and leave behind additional troops to defend the base, then remove themselves from the fighting."

"I see, sir."

"But," Tarkin added, "he specified that your sister is confirmed to be one of the Rebels participating in the attack."

Luke stiffed. _Leia_—

_—the ruined husk of a moon gutted by Imperial industrialisation, Leia glaring at him and screaming, running straight for him with her crimson lightsaber alight and hungry, _leaping_ to bring it crashing down against his—_

"And also said that if you wished to prove your loyalty by capturing or killing dear Leia in the name of the Empire, he gives his permission for you to stay behind for the battle."

Luke worked his throat.

This was his chance.

He could pretend to be loyal. Sneak down to the moon and stay behind, without Palpatine's watchdog breathing over his neck. And when Leia came at him with a lightsaber, he could talk her around and beg her forgiveness, and they could _escape together_—

No.

No. He'd seen the vision. He didn't think it was literal, but it was a warning: if he tried to escape now, something would go wrong.

Something would be missing.

Something to do with Leia. . .

His gaze slid around the room, until it rested on the still-lit holo of the Death Star, hovering like an innocuous moon in its own right.

He took in a breath.

There was no way of knowing what the vision meant, exactly. Why he'd grasped it so quickly, and briefly. So he wouldn't make his decision on that.

He'd make his decision on something else.

Namely: the fact that the Death Star was in the hands of a monster, and he needed to find a way to send _both_ those abominations to an early grave.

"I am grateful that my Emperor is so thoughtful and generous," he said. "But his permission is not his blessing, and I live to serve him. If he prefers that I survive to serve him another day, rather than risk my life and my usefulness to a fool's errand which may well turn lethal, I will honour his wishes above all else."

Tarkin raised his eyebrows. "Well said, boy. I will convey to the Emperor your graciousness." He waved a lazy hand. "Now go. I have no further use for you today."

Luke inclined his head, and made to leave the room.

Han and Mara were waiting for him outside. Han's tension was a klaxon in the Force.

"You really need to learn how to shield yourself," Luke snapped, marching down the corridor much faster than necessary. Han swore as he jogged to catch up.

"I need to _what_—?"

"Shield yourself. Your distaste and irritation and nervousness is making my head hurt."

"Well I didn't realise I was going to work for some kriffing _space wizard_— and hey, who said I was nervous?"

"I did. I can sense it."

"Well—"

"I'll teach him to shield," Mara interrupted when they finally paused in front of their quarters. Luke fished the code cylinder out of his pocket and opened the door, walking in. "If it's so important to you."

"Of course it is. Can you not _sense_ it?"

"Yes, but not strongly." Mara paused outside of the door to her bedroom. "I'm not part of the oh-so-powerful bloodline you supposedly belong to, Skywalker."

Luke snapped his mouth shut at that.

Then he looked at Han's face and laughed.

"No, I'll teach him," he decided. "Force forbid anyone has to suffer through your brutal teaching techniques."

The only response he got was a slammed door.

Luke collapsed onto the sofa.

"Kid." He cracked an eye open to see Han stare down at him. "Who says I wanna learn in the first place?"

"No one. But you have to." Luke slid his eyes shut again. "I don't know how you got to this position, Han Solo, whether it be bribery, fake scandocs or sheer accident, but I suspect it wasn't standard _or_ legal."

Han tensed up.

"Don't panic; I don't care. I just know that you're here now, you're in the Imperial sphere, in the company of. . ." His lips twitched. "_Space wizards_, and you're at a disadvantage if you can't shield."

Han folded his arms across his chest. "And what does _shielding_ involve, exactly?"

"Blocking off your thoughts. Erecting a wall, so people can't peer in," Luke sifted through briefly, "and tell you that Solo wasn't the name you were born with, but a random one some Imperial recruitment officer gave you to put on the form."

"Hey!" Han's hand jumped up to his head. "Stop that!"

"I have. Others won't." Luke opened his eyes fully and sat forwards, staring up at Han. "But if you learn how to shield, they won't have a choice."

Han paused.

Luke coaxed, "I can teach you now, if you want."

Han narrowed his eyes, flexed his hands. . . But nodded.

"Alright," he said. "Let's give this a shot."

* * *

It wasn't until hours later, physically and mentally exhausted, that Luke stumbled into bed. Memories rang in his mind—he wasn't sure if they were Han's, Leia's, or his own.

_Leia. . ._

"Ben?" he whispered. The old man was silent. "Ben?"

He closed his eyes. A tear worked its way out through his lashes to trickle down the side of his face, wetting the pillow by his ear.

"Ben?" he tried again. "Leia. Tell me about Leia."

Leia, who was going to attack Cymoon-1 once they'd left.

Leia, who Tarkin would be laying a trap for while they were there.

"Tell me—" He choked up. "Tell me she's alright. That she _will be _alright. Please."

There was still no reply.

Luke stopped pleading, but lay there in the dark, listening, for a long time after.


	40. Love and War

The vicious hum came for his head and he jerked back, parried, struck. Wove around, sliced, struck. Twirled his saber, swept, struck.

Mara paused, backing away from him slowly and panting, her yellow gaze on his blade. She spun her saber loosely.

"Only one blade out," Luke noted with a slight smile, nodding to the double-bladed hilt, the singular beam of red.

Mara bared her teeth in what might've been a grin. "You think I need two?"

The strike came faster than the eye could see. He slid his left foot back, one hand out for balance, and let his lightsaber bend to the left, the red blades screeching at the contact. His prosthetic hand, on the hilt, strained less than his flesh hand might have.

He shoved his right foot back and leapt forwards slightly, both hands on the hilt—

The clash was deafening.

Han, sitting off to the side of the training room and eyeing the sabers nervously, swore.

Luke just grinned and backed off again, saber dancing in a mesmerising pattern that sure enough drew Mara's eye and then—

The Force barrelled into her chest and she was thrown back—

But she somersaulted and landed on her feet, spinning fast enough to duck as he drove his saber down two-handed, weave as he slashed to the side.

A kick to his wrist and his saber went flying. Han ducked, swearing.

Luke swore himself, _rolled_—

Mara held out her hand, but Luke intercepted his saber just before it landed in her hand and lit it even before he'd caught it, bringing it high in a clumsy parry, low in a slightly more elegant one.

Mara _pushed_ at their crossed sabers—though what she was trying to accomplish, when Luke was taller and stronger, he didn't understand. He pushed back, and then she whispered mockingly, "Showing off for Solo?"

He tossed his head back and laughed.

Yanked back as she slashed at the flesh of his throat, sliced down in a spinning curve, forcing her to retreat, but he didn't stop laughing.

"There's no Inquisitors around for me to worry about humiliating you in front of this time, Mara," he told her, still smiling. "No holding back now."

She. . . paused, momentarily, at his half-confession, then wrinkled her nose in what might've been irritation, what might've been a frustrated gratitude.

Her eyes, when they glinted, were more green than yellow. "Then actually bring it on," she challenged, "Luke."

He did.

There was some lag in his prosthetic hand—weight and density and coordination he was still, weeks and months later, adjusting to—but the lightsaber was more blur than beam and he _slashed_—

She blocked the blow, but her arms trembled with the effort.

He hammered down and she couldn't deflect so she blocked again, gritting her teeth against the strain—

Their lightsabers were on low-power training mode. He whacked her wrist; when she yelped at the slight burn it gave her, he yanked the saber out of her hand and brought it to.

Both blades shimmered at her throat.

She stared up at him, panting, something like fear in her gaze. He could see his own face reflected in the eyes, along with the cross of sabers, red against green.

He stepped back and lowered them, offering her hers back. "Well fought."

She took it. "Well fought." The fear had vanished now, that grin returned. "Though I'm fairly sure that when we agreed to lightsaber sparring, no mention of practising the incorporation of Force blows was made."

It was a weak argument, he knew, one that would've got her shredded in the Inquisitorius.

He was glad she felt she could make it with him.

He shrugged and smiled sweetly. "All's fair."

Two seconds later he was on his back on the floor, the wind knocked out of him, and Mara had not even touched him.

He burst out laughing again. Han was already howling.

After a moment of tense staring, Luke pushed himself back to his feet, and Mara laughed too.

* * *

There was an irate banging on the 'fresher door. "Hurry up, Skywalker! You're not the only one who has _burns_ to treat!"

Luke rolled his eyes but smiled to himself, slapping the last bacta patch on his arm, where the sleeve of his loose training top had been scorched through, and headed out.

Mara was leaning against the wall outside, glaring at the door. Then flushed a little when Luke came out and her eye line was on his chest. She pushed off and shoved past him. "About time."

"Love you too," he drawled without thinking, then kicked himself when he heard her silence—and processed what he'd said.

He cursed under his breath until he got to his bedroom. Han, sitting on the sofa in the main living area, gave him a look.

Luke ignored him.

The door to his bedroom hissed open and he wasted no time in collapsing onto the bed, sweaty training clothes and all. He placed his lightsaber neatly on the bedside table and grimaced.

Mara wasn't Leia. He didn't _want_ her to be Leia. Sparring with his sister and sparring with the watchdog the Emperor had set on him were two very different things, and he _didn't want them to be similar at all._

And they _weren't_.

But when he hadn't seen Leia in months, when there was a physical, gaping hole in his chest, when he'd never, ever felt so _lonely_. . .

He'd even half-adopted Han, for Force's sake, and he was _certain_ there was something fishy going on with him.

He needed—

He didn't know what he needed.

No. He did.

He needed Leia.

But. . . until he could escape, or find a way to destroy the Death Star, or _whatever reason he was staying here _that suddenly seemed so _meaningless_, he _couldn't_.

But, he supposed, until then. . .

"Ben?" he asked, hoping against all hope that the ghost would actually respond this time. "Ben? Can you—" He choked up. "Is Leia alright? Can you tell me if Leia's alright?"

No response.

The adrenaline from earlier, the ache in his muscles, the _exhaustion_, barrelled into him at once. He closed his eyes against the tears welling; they spilled down anyway, wetting the pillow underneath his cheek.

"Ben. . ." he whispered. "You _have_ to tell me. . ."

Nothing. Not a whisper of wind—just still, stale air, like there always was on a Star Destroyer. Luke had been here for three days and he already hated it.

They'd be arriving tomorrow. Setting up a trap, extra guards, for Leia. Betraying his sister and his mother and the cause he'd promised himself he wouldn't abandon even more.

"Ben?"

Ben wasn't coming.

Or if he was, he wasn't going to tell him anything that would help. Ben was _useless_, for all his talk about passing messages and being the light in the dark, because it was _so, so dark here_—

Did Leia even know he hadn't betrayed her?

Did Leia even know what his plan was?

Did his mother? Did Ahsoka? Had they just written him off as a lost cause and resolved to abandon him, worse, to kill him on sight for turning on them, for lying, for being weak where they were strong—

He sobbed.

They needed to know.

He needed to tell them.

He needed to _make sure they knew_.

But how?

Ben wouldn't pass it on. Ben was clearly unreliable. Ben had abandoned him here. When could he—

He could stay behind at Cymoon, surely? Tell Leia in person, when she came, so she could read the truth in his heart and his soul and his tears? Leave with her, and hope she had it in her to forgive him for walking away when he had the chance to tear down a Star, because he loved and missed her too much—

No.

No, he couldn't leave. He had to see this through.

He— he couldn't stay behind to tell her in person. Not if all this sacrifice had to mean something.

Which meant. . .

A message?

Luke frowned.

It. . . it was risky. If the message was found, it could compromise everything, _everything_, but—

But there was no point in discovering a flaw, in finding the plans, or _anything_, if no one in the Rebellion believed he was in earnest, was there?

He _needed_ them to understand.

He could add whatever security to the message—the holo?—he could. A password only Leia would know, and then that would be enough. It would have to be enough. It could work.

It could work.

He just had to be careful.

He glanced around the room. They would arrive at Cymoon tomorrow; if that was to be the place he passed it on, he'd need to make the message fast. There was a holorecorder available—a small one, with a self-destruct feature that he knew most high-ranking Imperials used. It was so much more reliable to turn evidence to dust rather than risk some slicer dug something up even after the memory was wiped.

And of course, as a military-grade holorecorder should, it had the option for password encryption.

Luke thought for a moment, then smiled.

He knew exactly what to use.

* * *

". . .I love you."

Blast. He was crying.

He made to wipe his tears away surreptitiously, but he knew it was a lost cause and he didn't have time to make another recording; it would just have to stay in. But if Ahsoka—or worse, his _mother_—saw it, thought it was unprofessional, decided they shouldn't be putting their faith in this _child_—

It didn't matter.

What mattered was that the message got to Leia.

What mattered was that she knew he loved her, and—

"I miss you," he added, "_so much_. I— I'll see you soon, I promise, after I succeed in this." He smiled. "I promise.

"Now, I'm gonna leave this somewhere on Cymoon for you to find, because Tarkin received intelligence that you would be there and is going there to shore up its defences again the attack, and I promise you I'll do my best to sabotage them. I— yeah." He shrugged. "I promise."

He swallowed. "I'll see you—"

There was a loud rap on the door. Luke nearly jumped out of his skin.

"Kid! That grumpy old governor guy wants to see you in his office before we arrive. Some sorta briefing."

Luke relaxed. Marginally. Tried to smile at Han's levity, but failed. "I'll be out in a second."

He looked at the holoprojector and mouthed _I love you_.

Then he switched it off, extracted the chip with the message on it, and hit a button.

The holoprojector burnt and crumpled on his bedroom floor.

* * *

Cymoon 1 looked just as dystopian as it had in the holos.

Luke had managed to claim a seat right next to the shuttle passenger area's only window and he was using it gratuitously to glare at the moon's ravaged surface. From space, it was just a sickening mottled brown, but as they approached further Luke saw it was actually plains upon plains of refuse fields, filled to the brim with industrial waste. The factory itself was sprawling, as large as the Imperial Palace, and smoke belched from the top, an unsettling yellowish colour. Luke didn't want to think about the air quality here; the briefing had said it was breathable to humans, but that didn't mean a human _should_ breathe it.

He swallowed as they set down and the sound of the comm crackled back from the cockpit: _"Welcome to the Corellian Industrial Cluster, Grand Moff Tarkin. Welcome to Cymoon One."_

The voice was familiar.

Sure enough, the moment Luke stepped out of the shuttle behind Tarkin, Mara and Han flanking him on either side, he had to bite back a cough. Director Vilrein, coming out of the factory proper to meet them on the landing pad, slid her eyes to him in a sympathetic look.

"Governor Tarkin," she greeted solemnly, standing to attention, her hands behind her back. "No entourage today?"

He waved off her pleasantries and started walking; she jogged to catch up. "I have no need for an entourage unless it is for show, Director, you know that. And we are not here for show today. We are here to get you on track."

"Yes, Governor," she said. Her gaze flicked to Luke, but she said nothing.

Tarkin caught it anyway. "This is Luke, my newest aide. I trust you're already familiar with him?"

Cold touched the back of Luke's mind and suddenly Luke's reservations about this whole situation tripled.

His message weighed heavily in his pocket.

He managed to force out stiffly, "It's nice to see you again, Director."

"The pleasure's all mine." Her gaze slid back to Tarkin. He was tapping his foot.

"Shall we go?" he said.

She dipped her head. "Of course, sir. Right this way are the main reactors. . ."

"Fully automated, I presume?"

There was a joke in Tarkin's tone. Vilrein paused, and stiffened.

Why. . .?

Luke frowned, closed his eyes briefly, and reached out with the Force. He still felt that _coldness_—and, knowing what he did, he had an unfortunate suspicion of who they were—but he reached beyond it, to—

The main reactor.

No, the corridors nearby. The _individual_ people, milling around the factory's centre like stars around a sun, and what their minds felt like.

Han nudged him. "Kid?"

Luke opened his eyes again.

Slaves.

The Empire may call it _fully automated_. . . but it was run on slaves.

Just like his grandmother, who'd given him the Skywalker name—

No. He shied away from the thoughts brewing in his mind, just as Mara gave him an odd look. He couldn't do that.

Leia wasn't here to have his back, and he couldn't risk this role. He _couldn't_ give up everything for one harebrained scheme destined to fail on his own—

But his sister could.

His sister was coming.

She would see the slaves, and would free them. He knew that with a bone-deep certainty.

Which meant. . .

He smiled. A plan was starting to form.

* * *

They'd reached Vilrein's office when Tarkin finally dropped his thin veneer of disdain to reveal the thick, plain scorn underneath it. He sat in the chair opposite her desk and she sat in her seat; Luke was left standing to the side, trying to look like he was paying attention.

"Now that we've discussed the new plan of action to ensure this factory is producing enough weapons for the Empire's most lucrative project," Tarkin said, "I trust you will convey this to Overseer Aggadeen and ensure he follows it?"

She nodded, lips pinched. "Of course, sir."

"I must applaud your work, Director, I have never seen such high rates of production in all the facilities you are responsible for."

She dipped her head again. "Thank you, sir."

"Now, however," he leaned forwards, "we need to talk about security."

A faint frown creased her brow—the only indication of her sudden confusion. "As I and Overseer Aggadeen demonstrated to you during the tour, we take our security very seriously. Our status as the biggest arms factory in the galaxy is shown by the fact that we have some of the heaviest security in the factory as well—"

"And yet the Rebels think they can overcome it." Tarkin drummed his fingers against the wood of the desk.

She was taken aback. "Then they are insane."

"Indeed." His fingers stopped drumming. "But lunatics often pose far more of a threat than we would like to believe, and this is not a fanciful hope of theirs. Our intelligence suggests that this is one of Amidala's full-blown, exquisitely organised operations, and that means there is _something_ in your security that she thinks she can exploit."

His hand tightened into a fist on the table. "So it is our job to patch up that breach."

"Of course, Governor," she said. "What do you have in mind?"

He smiled, and gestured to Luke. "My aide's twin sister is one of the Rebels who will be coming in this. . . attack force. I trust you remember her?"

Her eyes blew wide, honey skin gone wan. "_Miss Leia_ defected?"

"She did," Luke said coldly. "And she seeks to wreak more havoc on the Empire than she has already caused. " He smiled. There was nothing warm in that, either. "We would prefer it if she was stopped."

"Will you be staying behind to fight her?" Vilrein challenged.

Luke shrank back the tiniest bit. "No."

"He is needed elsewhere," Tarkin cut in smoothly. "_I_ need him."

Vilrein didn't back down.

"Miss Leia is a Force wielder, and a powerful one at that," she hissed. "We have excellent defences against Rebels, against Jedi, against droids. Not against _Darth Vader's daughter_."

"My father is only a man," Luke said. "And my sister is barely a woman."

Vilrein's dark eyes were fixed on his—at the loose collar of his Imperial uniform.

"Your top button is undone," she told him flatly.

Luke flinched and clenched his fists.

"Indeed you _do not_ have the resources to fight such a person," Tarkin informed her. "So I will be shoring them up."

That cold was back, and it was nipping at the back of Luke's neck, like a lightsaber about to behead him.

The door hissed open. Three black-clad figures stood in the doorway, helmets closed.

Vilrein's skin paled even further.

"The Emperor, in his gracious goodwill and desire for this factory to remain in Imperial hands," Tarkin said, "has even allowed me to send for his personal Jedi hunters."

The Inquisitors were staring at Luke. Their stares felt nothing like Mara's, even as he could feel her, outside, glaring at her _brethren_; they were utterly, utterly ruthless.

"My sister is no Jedi," he said.

There was a vindictive smile in the voice of. . . whichever one of them spoke. "She's close enough."

Vilrein shrank back into her chair.

Tarkin ordered, "His Majesty wants Miss Leia alive. Slaughter the others, protect this factory to the best of your ability—but capture her, _alive_. She is not yours to kill."

His grey gaze moved to Luke.

"He is saving _that_ privilege for someone else."

* * *

They returned to the _Sovereign II_ for that night cycle, with the intent of spending a second day implementing the changes and overseeing the Inquisitors' ingratiation into the factory's workings before they left for Coruscant to report back to Palpatine on their progress. He'd been _so insistent_ that he check up on Luke in person.

Luke barely managed to make it to their quarters before he started shaking.

Han saw. His hand sprang out, hovering above his shoulder. "Kid. . .?"

"She's a traitor," Mara told him, perching herself on the arm of one of the sofas and looking down her nose at him. "You shouldn't be upset about the concept of her capture—of her being brought to justice."

_She's my _sister.

_And this is not justice._

". . .yes," he forced out of his throat. The word _burned_— "But what Tarkin implied. . . I can't—"

"If you can't kill her, someone else will, and they won't make it quick."

Luke glared. "Don't you have to sharpen your knives in your room or something?"

She didn't say anything. Just left, like he'd asked her to.

Han actually rubbed his shoulder this time. "So, kid. . . I take it your sister turned on you?"

Luke gave a bitter laugh. "It's a long story."

"We've got time."

"A long story _I don't want to tell_." He looked at Han. "And we need to work on your shielding some more."

"Huh? Why?"

"Because when it's just me and Mara, it's fine—we can shut you out, afford you basic respect and privacy. But those Inquisitors are nearby now. They will sniff out the fact that you're hiding something within moments and they _will_ tear your mind open to find it."

Han yanked his hand back. "_Hiding something_. . ."

"I'm not an idiot, Han." Luke sighed. "Do you want to learn how to shield some more or not?"

Han glared.

Luke shrugged. "Fine, don't blame me when the Inquisitors rip your mind open and—"

"Alright alright, I'll do it." Han sat himself down on the sofa opposite Luke.

Raising his eyebrows, Luke said, "Close your eyes then."

Han dutifully did so. With a groan and a grimace.

Luke closed his eyes too, and reached out.

_Don't panic at the sound of my voice_, he said.

Han's chin snapped upwards. "You—"

"This is a shielding lesson," Luke said aloud. "If you fail, it may hurt."

_Now, _please_ try not to react this time. This _is_ a shielding lesson, but I need to talk to you first._

"I—"

_No, don't say anything aloud. You're not Force-sensitive; you won't be able to respond to me, and you _are_ shielding, somewhat. I can't read your thoughts in enough detail to receive words. All I ask you to do is listen._

Intense irritation flooded him, and that time Luke _did_ pick up a few words. _Blasted space sorcerers, this is not what I signed up for when Chewie—_

Without taking the time to wonder who _Chewie_ was, Luke said_, Han. . ._

_I need your help._

* * *

This was the last day the esteemed Governor Tarkin was meant to be here. Elayn was glad.

Tarkin was an overly harsh taskmaster; she'd always thought that, and clearly Miss Leia agreed, by the incensed message she'd sent after she'd discovered Elayn's demotion, and the barely-repressed rage she'd held at Kuat. Her brother must be no different—the twins had been ruthlessly in sync and _effective_ when dealing with Trite, never seeming to disagree—but if that was the case then he'd clearly grown more diplomatic in the last eight or nine months. The only reaction he ever gave to. . . any given disgusting word out of Tarkin's mouth was a slight tightening around the eyes, a slight twitch of the lips.

But it was the last day they were due to be here, and Tarkin was currently talking to the platoons of guards he'd brought to reinforce them—as well as those _Inquisitors_. Elayn frowned.

Well, even Luke had looked displeased when he saw them, but she was more concerned about what they _meant_.

Leia was coming here?

Leia had _defected_?

And, most surprisingly: _Luke hadn't_?

She swallowed as her step faltered, and she glanced left and right down the corridor, as though someone may have heard her thoughts. Impossible, of course, except—

Except that her factory was overrun with _Inquisitors_ now, wasn't it?

But she— she couldn't believe that the twins would be split on such a polarising issue. Not with how they'd worked together before. Which meant. . .

It meant that either Leia was a spy, or—

Or Luke was.

And if Leia was a spy, why would the Empire need to send _Darth Vader's daughter_, the presumed heir to the Empire, probably the most valuable hostage in the galaxy, to the heart of a Rebellion that would slit her throat?

It made no sense.

And Elayn had seen how both the twins had reacted to the reveal of _Project Stardust_ at Kuat—

She paused.

She was heading outside, to where Tarkin was giving his. . . _rallying speech_. . . to the troops, and she was running late anyway; she needed to hurry. But she had to walk past the slaves' quarters to get there, as much as she usually tried to avoid them. (She'd be glad when she was off this moon, this hellish excuse for a factory, everything that Imperial imperialism was—)

There was someone at the door to the slaves' quarters.

Someone who was, she could tell, decidedly _not_ a slave.

"Excuse me?" she called out. The man froze, half-turned towards her, and she got a good look at his face.

It was Luke's bodyguard. She'd never got his name, but she was sure it was him.

"Director Vilrein!" he greeted, doing a decent impression of a military bow and walking off before she could ask him anything else.

She frowned at his back, debating shouting him down, then glanced at the door.

She pushed through it.

The sight and smell of the living conditions smacked her in the face and she grimaced, making a mental note to petition Aggadeen—_again_—over treatment of his _fully automated system_. Not that she thought he would listen.

Everyone tensed up when she entered, but her gaze instantly fell on a knot of people in the corner, crouched around one person's sleeping mat. The person in question, a Rodian whose green head was almost totally swallowed by the crowd, ducked down further as she approached.

The knot disbanded as the slaves hunched and struggled to get away from her—she swallowed tightly—and left the Rodian sitting on his own, long fingers curled around. . . something.

Something that glinted.

She stopped in front of him, and held her hand out. "May I see it?"

For a moment, he looked like he was about to resist. Then, without meeting her gaze, he dropped it into her palm.

It was a datachip.

Elayn frowned, deeply. What had Luke's bodyguard been doing, handing the slaves a _datachip_. . .? They had no access to computer terminals; to pass it onto someone else? Who could they pass it onto? Who was Luke's bodyguard spying on him for?

Who could possibly come to Cymoon anytime soon to pick it up—?

_Oh._

Her eyes wide, she turned on her heel and strode out, to the office a few corridors down. She was going to be _very_ late, but she shut the door behind her, then locked it. Jabbed the chip into the computer terminal and stared at the holo that flickered to life.

The fuzzy text that it showed demanded a code to hear the message. Before she could even _begin_ to wonder what the code was supposed to be, a voice rang out and gave the clue, nonsensical to her, but probably everything the intended recipient would need:

_"It's horrendous. Disgusting. Abominable."_

She stared at it.

That voice— That was Luke speaking.

It looped. _"It's horrendous. Disgusting. Abominable."_

So Luke had given the message to his bodyguard to pass on, while he stood next to Tarkin briefing the Inquisitors? Who was the message even for?

It was really not very difficult to work out who the message was for.

"_It's horrendous. Disgusting. Abominable."_

So Luke had tried to pass a message to his sister via the slaves—had known that she was coming, and she would be out to free them.

So Luke was a defector—a traitor—too.

Elayn tilted her head.

Luke and Leia had promoted her, before Tarkin had come along. They had shown competence and. . . reliability, despite their age; a dissatisfaction with _certain aspects _of the Empire that had never quite sat right with her, either. They had given her their patronage, and any officer in the Imperial ranks knew what patronage meant.

So, she supposed, if she was truly loyal to the Empire she served, she'd rather have the twins calling the shots, not locked up behind bars or executed, than kowtow to a lord, or a governor.

Or even an emperor.

Slipping the message into her pocket, she went to apologise to Tarkin for being late.


	41. Conflict on Cymoon

Cymoon was horrible. Leia had barely been here for a few moments, and she already wanted to leave.

The fields upon fields of _waste_ turned her stomach the more she looked, and eventually she just looked away.

A blue astromech droid—R2-D2, she though he was called; Padmé said he was on loan from Organa for this mission—rolled up to her and beeped.

She rolled her eyes. Her binary was a tad rusty, but— "I'm fine, R2-D2."

Another beep—a whistle.

"Fine—_Artoo_, then. But I'm still fine."

A sceptical shriek.

"Well, then your sensors aren't working properly, because I'm _fine_." She turned away. "And I don't want to talk about it right now."

A slow, low boop, then R2 rolled away. She watched him go slightly mournfully, then glanced back out the viewport.

Her breathing hitched when they landed.

Luke.

She could sense—

Had Luke—

No. No, she wasn't going to think about that.

She heard Qi'ra in the cockpit answering the hail and grimaced at the shrill voice of the overseer—_Aggadeen_, he introduced himself as and Padmé had said in her briefing; Aggadeen—as it came over the comm.

It sounded almost threatening when he finally said,_ "Welcome to Cymoon One."_

Leia wanted to leave.

It felt. . . cold. . .

The shuttle set down and Leia made to shrug her helmet on, grimacing at the design.

When they emerged from the belly of the beat up shuttle, the garb of the guards uncomfortably hot and sweaty in the nauseating air, Qi'ra held her head high and strode forwards. Leia and Jyn followed in their costumes on either side, as stiff and alert as any bodyguards could be, and Artoo trundled along behind them. She still wasn't sure why he was here.

The man they met didn't look like much. Stern, human, the Core in his voice and in his sneer—he was Imperial to the bone.

_He_ was flanked by six stormtroopers. Leia wondered just how threatened he felt.

"Greetings in the name of the Emperor," he ground out. "He thanks you for joining us today and hopes our negotiations prove swift and fruitful. I am Overseer Aggadeen . Whom do I have the. . . _honour_," there was a sneer to his voice, "of addressing?"

Leia tensed at the disgust she sensed—not just in Aggadeen, that was expected, but in the troopers behind him. It was expected that they might harbour _some_ distaste for the so-called _representatives _of a_ crime cartel_, after all, but not this. . .

This. . .

Well. The stormtroopers _despised_ them; she could sense that. She just couldn't sense why.

Qi'ra's chin was high as she said, "Qi'ra, the official emissary from Crimson Dawn."

It had been a risk, using Crimson Dawn as their cover _again_. But Leia had reported that the other options, the Hutts, had ongoing hostilities between Jabba and Vader (small wonder why, now that she thought about it) so they refused to negotiate with the Empire at this time; the Pike syndicated had all but vanished in the seven years since the Empire had formally annexed Kessel, their main money maker, after they'd had a few too many slave uprisings; and Black Sun's prince was far too cosy with Palpatine as it was to ever need to rely on _representatives_ to discuss a deal with the Empire.

So, as far as large syndicates with access to resources went, Crimson Dawn remained their best bet. And Qi'ra, as the ex-administrator, was their best choice to play the role.

A droid with a vaguely bug-like head stepped forwards and leaned in close to Qi'ra's face. She leaned back slightly, grimacing and shooting Aggadeen a look, but didn't object to the scan it took of her features.

Leia ground her teeth and swallowed. This was the moment of truth. If that droid had access to the databases of the Imperial Palace, where Qi'ra had been caught as a Rebel before, they were all done for; if not. . .

"Identity confirmed," the droid barked. "First name: Qi'ra. Last name: none. Known leading member of the Crimson Dawn syndicate, replaced Dryden Vos upon his murder."

If Qi'ra twitched outwardly at the mention of said _murder_, it was only with the slight shimmer of the Force that Leia noticed it.

"No Rebel matches, I suppose?" Aggadeen drawled.

Leia's breath hitched under the helmet. Did he suspect. . .?

No: did he _know_. . .?

The droid slowly turned its head to stare at Aggadeen.

"Yes," it continued. Leia's heart was a bird trying to take flight through her veins. "Number of files of known Rebels subject bears resemblance to: two million, six hundred and thirty seven thousand, eight hundred and twenty one. Pale-skinned, dark-haired human female is a highly common phenotype in the galaxy."

"Fine." Aggadeen waved his hand shortly. Despite the fact that the droid had cleared them, Leia did not relax. "Your. . . _bodyguards_ must leave their weapons behind, as a safety precaution."

_Safety_. Huh.

Leia _did_ hand them over—well, the ones that they knew would be detected by a scan, anyway; Qi'ra had already demonstrated in their final briefing the _many_ ways a Crimson Dawn guard's uniform cold be used for this specific purpose—and hissed into the comlink in her helmet, desperate to hear the crackle of someone else's voice across it: "We're in. I think."

_"You think?"_ came Biggs's dry voice. Wedge snorted in the background.

Leia rolled her eyes. Just because the pilots got the easy job of sitting back and waiting in the junk fields to pick them up, didn't mean—

"We're through," she hissed as they started walking. "Now shut up."

The factory, once they were inside, _was_ impressive. Aggadeen had them walk through a vast warehouse of TIE cockpits being assembled, wings being fitted, viewports being attached, before they even stopped outside the door to the meeting room they were due to 'negotiate' in. Leia was half-looking around because it was her job, as a _bodyguard_, to take in and assess her surroundings, but also because she was genuinely in awe of the construction of quick, graceful ships like the TIE fighters. She thought of the TIE Defender she'd flown against Luke and her father, so long ago, and her heart ached.

"Marvellous," Qi'ra said. "I find it incredible, the amount of destructive power and grace the Empire can construct and dispatch within a moment's notice."

Aggadeen didn't quite know what to do with that. "Well, this is the largest, most effectively defended base in the galaxy, and our resources. . ."

Leia stopped listening after a while, too lost in nostalgia.

Luke should be here, she thought. He'd love— not a _weapons_ factory necessarily, but seeing how those ships were built, how they were equipped—

Only he had been here recently, hadn't he?

She could sense him.

She wondered why.

She wondered if he'd known she soon would be, too.

The Force was swirling around her in dark, sluggish currents, and it was tugging her towards. . .

A corridor. Down there.

It felt cold. Horrible.

And yet she knew it was exactly where she needed to go.

She glanced at Aggadeen out of the corner of her eye. His nose was still turned up as he came to a halt in front of that door and said, "The negotiator will arrive shortly. You will await him within."

Qi'ra was still spinning poetic about the. . . TIE fighters? Imperial might? Leia didn't know, but she switched on her comm in her helmet and hissed to Jyn, "I have a feeling. I'm going to investigate down that corridor; something's there, something I need to see or know." _Or confront_, she added in her head.

Jyn snorted. _"A feeling from the Force?"_

"_Yes_," Leia snapped. "Cover for me."

Then she slipped away from the group and walked down the corridor, not caring who turned to stare.

* * *

Jyn couldn't turn to watch Leia go, but her heart was pounding in her ears. _Kriff_ Force users and their nonsense anyway; they were far, far more trouble than they were worth.

"Your bodyguard seems to have wandered off," Aggadeen observed, though none of the guards made to follow Leia. That was odd.

Jyn ground out, before Qi'ra could no doubt come up with some eloquent explanation Leia would shatter the moment she returned, "She went to scout out the perimeter. We do not trust that the Empire hasn't left any _surprises_ for us." She gave him a challenging look, though she doubted he could see it through her helmet. "No offence."

Aggadeen just scoffed. "Emissaries from _crime cartels_ are hardly worth the effort of betraying."

There was something in that sentence.

The astromech droid rolled forwards. Jyn glared and tensed, reaching for the weapons concealed under her disguise—

Only to freeze when the door to the negotiating room burst open and ranks upon ranks of stormtroopers filed out, _thoroughly_ boxing them in.

Jyn, Qi'ra and R2-D2 against a corridor jammed with bucket heads.

Well.

"Undercover Rebels, however," Aggadeen said, face twisting with a vicious sort of disgust, hatred, "are always worth the effort of stamping out."

Jyn was wearing armour; Qi'ra was not. She stepped forwards to cover her side, at least a little bit, but from all angles like this it was really impossible to help at all.

"Especially your friend who wandered off," Aggadeen said. Jyn would have rolled her eyes were she not too busy monitoring the situation; he liked to talk, didn't he? "As I understand it, she is a prize the Emperor will value above all—"

He frowned. "Your droid is leaking fluids."

Yes he was: R2-D2 was seeping greenish liquid all over the floor.

"Is Rebel property of such poor quality that it starts to fall apart at the slightest— _AHH!_"

Jyn grinned viciously and pivoted out of the way, careful not to touch any stormtroopers, as R2-D2 discharged a shock that shot right through the liquid, right through their armour, leaving the rest of the crowd untouched.

Before Aggadeen could even squeal, Qi'ra punched him. He collapsed.

Then she kicked him while he was down. "Which way to the main power core?"

Aggadeen coughed blood. "I am a sworn officer of the Empire, I will _never_—"

He was cut off when Qi'ra put a foot on his chest and pressed down. There was a blaster in her hand; Jyn wasn't sure if she'd grabbed it from one of the fallen stormtroopers littering the floor or if she'd had it on her the whole time.

She cocked it at him and purred, "Which way?"

Aggadeen shakily pointed in a direction—the opposite direction to where Leia had gone.

Whatever that _feeling_ of hers had been, Jyn grouched, she hoped it was more useful than _the actual direction of where they wanted to go_.

Qi'ra smiled. "Thanks."

Then she shot him.

Jyn didn't flinch. She just gave her one glance, a nod, then they both turned in synchrony and headed for the core.

Leia could catch up with them later.

* * *

Someone was ahead.

Leia frowned. Someone was ahead—the person she was being drawn to?—and they were _miserable_.

No: multiple people were ahead.

Dozens of people were ahead.

They were. . .

Leia turned a corner, stomach roiling, then pushed open a door to view the cellar it led her down into. When she caught sight of the first person's eyes through the bars of a cage, she understood exactly.

Slaves.

_Slaves._

She could've _sworn_ this factory was supposed to be fully automated!

Another lie; another oversight of Imperial bureaucracy; another case of Imperial practice _blatantly opposing_ the code she'd once believed in so fiercely. It didn't matter.

What mattered was that she got them _out_.

"Fully automated," she muttered to herself as she got closer, hit the bottom of the stairs and peered at the padlock. The slaves stared back at her with trepidation. "_Fully automated. . ._"

"Hey!"

She froze, then whirled on the balls of her feet, to face behind her, backing up against the bars.

"Step away from those cages," snarled a man—heavy-set, human, wearing a _ridiculous_ helmet, getup, but worryingly enough wielding a electro-whip. He snapped it threateningly. "Unless you'd like to be in one."

This was the slave driver, huh?

For a moment Leia studied him, not moving an _inch_ to back away from the cages. Distant memories, a feeling that ran as deeply in her blood as the feeling of homeliness on Naboo had, sparked: Tatooine. Her grandmother.

Her father.

She had to stop herself from seizing him around the throat and—

And what? Choking him was her father's style; perhaps snap his neck, or crush his head, or—

_No_.

She would enjoy that. It would let the dark side in.

But—she eyed the whip—she had no lightsaber to fight with.

"I _said_," he growled, "_step away from the cages_."

She twisted her lips and said, "No."

The whip snapped up, so fast it was just a wall of golden light, but Leia was faster; she seized his wrist with the Force and tried not to take satisfaction in the _crunch _she heard, nor the howl that followed. The whip clattered away across the floor.

She pivoted, drove her elbow into his chest through that _ridiculous_ garb, and kicked the back of his knees. He went down with a grunt.

By the time he made to stand up again, she had a blaster to his head.

_"I was never here,"_ she intoned, trying to channel that. . . that _peace_ Yoda had taught her.

His eyes crossed. "You— you were never— here. . ."

She stunned him.

A point blank stun shot, to the head. She didn't know what sort of damage that would cause—significant, she expected—but she hadn't killed him. Not personally.

Let him die with the base he worked on, when it went up in fire and smoke.

So long as she didn't kill him _personally_, it— it wouldn't be as _satisfying_ for the darkness that still snapped at her heels.

She hoped.

It was still pretty damn satisfying.

The moment he slumped to the floor she marched over to the slaves' cages, and eyed the padlock. A few shied away from her, a few leaned in closer; she ignored them all.

She held the padlock in her hand, felt with the Force, and it clicked open.

The door swung to. They stared.

She held out her arms in a half-shrug, half-invitation.

"I'm here with the Rebel Alliance," she announced. "My name's Leia Skywalker. Anyone who wants to get out of here. . ."

She turned on her foot again and strode up the stairs, tossing over her shoulder, "Come with me."

* * *

She was a mere few steps down the corridor when one of the slaves got up the guts to jog after her, calling, "Wait!"

She did wait. The person—a young Rodian only slightly taller than her—caught up with her easily and said, breathless from awe more than exertion: "You're Leia Skywalker?"

She stiffened.

Turned to them.

"Yes," she said cautiously. "Where did you hear my name?"

"He said you were coming—that you'd be able to free us where he couldn't. He gave us a message, but she took it."

"What?" Leia swallowed. "_Who_ said I was coming?" _It can't be—_

". . .Luke?" The Rodian frowned. "He was who the message was from, but he didn't deliver it to me—his. . . assistant did, a man named Han Solo."

That name meant nothing to her, but _Luke_ meant everything. "But it was from him?"

"It was from him."

"What—" Her heart was racing, palms suddenly sweaty; the words were on the tip of her tongue but she couldn't bring herself to say them. Finally: "What did the message say?"

"I don't know, I didn't have the password to see it." His scowl was fierce, unnaturally fierce for his young face, but his vehemence in the Force was real. "_She_ took it."

"Who?"

"The director," another slave—an orange-skinned Twi'lek woman—chimed in. "She took it; I don't know what she did with it. But her office is that way." She pointed. "If it's anywhere, it's there."

Leia nodded, though someone had replaced her intestines with blocks of ice.

If this Imperial _director_ had taken it. . . if she told Palpatine, or her father. . .

What was on the message?

How brutal would Luke's punishment be, if he was caught?

"Which door?" she asked.

"The third on the right."

Another person added, "It says _Director_ on it in Basic. I think."

"I understand." _That_ was the tug in the Force she was meant to be following; she was sure of it. She was sure of it. "Thank— _thank you_. Continue on here, to the main power core, and tell my friends that Leia sent you—explain the situation. I'll be there soon."

Then, before they could protest, she took off again.

The darkness thickened again as she moved, even the slaves' slowly lightening cloud of pain moved away. She reached the door easily; she only paused briefly when she read the name on it.

_Director Vilrein_.

Her lips twisted. She didn't know what she'd expected.

The door was locked, but as with the cages, that was no match for her.

The office itself was standard, with few personal mementos, but with a specific _touch_ that Leia had to admit she remembered Vilrein having. Everything organised in a specific way—not a way she could _identify_, but a way that was certainly recognisable.

She scanned the cabinets, the sleek desk, even the shutters on the windows. Where would she—?

She strode forwards; the door slammed behind her with a bang. There were two stacks of flimsi reports on the table; she leafed through them briefly, but that wasn't what she was looking for, she knew that. She was looking for something electronic—the Rodian boy had mentioned a pass code. . .

The drawers on the desk rattled as she rapped on them, and refused to budge when she tugged. Shoving a breath out through her nose, she unlocked them with the Force and tore them apart one by one but she _didn't like_ doing that; every time she touched the Force it felt chilly, jittery, like something was about to—

The door slid open.

—happen.

She froze, still hunched over the second-lowest drawer on the right hand side, hand fisted in a worthless scrap of flimsi.

The sudden hum of a lightsaber, the stench in the Force, was all she needed to hear.

She propelled herself backwards just in time for a crimson blade to carve the desk in two with a _crunch_, sparks flying, not quite catching on the wood.

She landed on the windowsill, legs underneath her, and _hissed_.

One Inquisitor loomed in the doorway, broad-shouldered and tall, but the one who'd swung the saber was slimmer (though no less tall). He tilted his head, observing her over the pile of matchwood he'd made of the desk, and she knew he was smiling.

He said, "We've been waiting a long time for this, Sithspawn."

Her hand constricted on the glass of the window but it wasn't standard glass; shattering it would take precious seconds. Seconds she didn't _have_—

The first Inquisitor lunged and she _leapt_, letting him slam into the window while she danced around the edge of the desk, the cool plastisteel of the filing cabinets pressed against her back; she tossed a worried look at the larger Inquisitor—

He was approaching, saber spinning on those _ridiculous_ hilts—

And the Force _exploded._

Leia screamed and it answered her call. The storm of flimsi and plastisteel moved and she moved with it. She charged forwards, seized a massive chunk of the desk and lobbed it at the first Inquisitor. It shattered the window he'd crashed into; he fell.

Far.

It was a long drop onto toxic, jagged scrap.

Acidic winds barrelled in through the window now and seized the hair not fixed in Leia's plait, flapping in her face briefly as she turned—

—the second Inquisitor turned too—

—and she ducked as his lightsaber flew.

It impaled itself in what was left of the cabinets. The saber extinguished itself; it clattered to the floor.

She scooped it up before he could even try.

"What is it with Inquisitors and fancy tricks that get you nowhere?" she spat. When she lit it—single blade; one blade was all she needed—the anger that hissed and sparked floored her for a moment.

This was the weapon of a Sith. She'd forgotten that.

But it was still the best weapon she had right now.

She leapt forwards, using the ruins of the desk as a springboard—

—there was a tug on her in midair but she batted it away easily, even as that vast figure loomed—

—and she _shoved_ the lightsaber through his guts.

"What is it with Inquisitors," she hissed, "and incompetence in general?"

She yanked it out again. He felt to his knees.

She left him to his death.

The moment she shut the door though, the Force tingled again.

She scanned her surroundings.

Then, Inquisitor's lightsaber still lit at her side, she sauntered down the corridor and drawled, "'Always two there are.' When did Palpatine see _that_ for the shit it was?"

"Probably around the time," came the expected answering voice, enhanced with that mechanical burr, "he saw you for the bitch you were."

Leia pivoted to the corridor on her left, blade already raised to parry.

Good; the final Inquisitor, a heavy-set woman this time, had already struck. It glanced off the blade with a force that made Leia's arms ache, her teeth shake, but she stabbed forwards before she could recover. The Inquisitor just deflected it; Leia yanked her hand back before it could get amputated.

"Not trying to kill me?" she ground out.

"You, Sithspawn? Never." The Inquisitor rained down blows and Leia stumbled back, warding them off as best she could— "Our master wants you alive. He's saving _your_ execution for someone special."

The corridor was too tight; Leia needed space to breathe. Space to _run_. The Inquisitor was too large and too strong to overpower by sheer force alone.

"Capture, then?" Leia's strike went wide; the blade skidded off the Inquisitor's to impale in the wall. She yanked it back hurriedly and conceded a few more steps.

She bared her teeth. "Good luck with _that_."

The Inquisitor ignored her—just kept approaching, Leia's pale, sweaty reflection gleaming in the carapace of her helmet.

"Your brother's looking forward to meeting you, I hear," she taunted, and Leia's heart jumped into her throat. "Palpatine wanted to give him the honour of capturing you himself, considering he put _so _much effort into building this trap, but as it was he settled for just giving the order. No matter." Similar to her dark side brother, back in the office, Leia could see her grin in the tilt of her helmet. "I'm sure he'll be the _special_ person who gets the honour of formally executing you—"

Leia _screamed_.

The Inquisitor actually jerked back several steps at the ferocity of her blows and she lost precision, everything, in the sudden surge of _red_.

_Luke._

_Luke._

_Luke._

_What are you doing to Luke you monsters what have you made him do what will you make him do what will you make him _become_—_

The Inquisitors hand flew down the corridor, still clutching the saber, and she squealed like an Ugnaught as she staggered back, collapsed. Leia's blade hovered in her face.

She could see her own reflection in her helmet. Her own furious, twisted, _vicious_ face, glaring at the Inquisitor with more hatred than the whole galaxy could bear in a thousand years.

The sight of it was horrifying.

The sight of the stump of the hand made her think of—

—_raging winds, screaming, a flash of red_—

—Luke's scream on that fateful day, too.

She clutched her stolen lightsaber tightly, then tossed it away. Behind her. She had no use for that sort of rage, pain; she'd given her own red lightsaber up _for a reason_.

The Inquisitor stared.

Leia brought out her blaster and stunned her. Quietly. Without fuss.

Let her, too, die in the explosion.

It wasn't a merciful death.

But it was the most merciful for Leia.

So she just walked away.

She had a factory to blow.

And, she thought, she really, _really_ needed a lightsaber of her own.

* * *

A ship manoeuvred through the atmosphere of Cymoon-1 to emerge before the yellowish clouds. Scanners picked it up immediately; it wasn't trying to hide, after all, and it was a strange, strange ship.

It was hailed, suspiciously and viciously, within moments.

The instant the comms officer received Lord Vader's personal code in return, however, they stopped.

The ship continued on.

* * *

"Have you set the charges?" Qi'ra asked, ponytail swinging as she glanced behind her again. Jyn was tempted to snap and ask her what she was so nervous about, but she understood it perfectly.

"Yes," she said instead. "Charges set." R2-D2 trundled up and beeped his affirmative.

She glanced over at the motley collection of slaves Leia had sent their way—without returning with them. Typical. "Are _you_ all ready to go?"

"Yes, ma'am," came the response.

Jyn rolled her eyes. _Ma'am._

Qi'ra shoved her thumb onto the _activate_ button of the last charge, and smiled at the menacing _beep, beep, beep_ that began to sound. "Let's go, then."

They made for the door. Jyn was already plotting out their route, where they needed to go, when she suddenly hissed, "_Stop_!"

The slaves stopped instantly. Qi'ra, entirely focused on what she was doing, didn't hear.

But Jyn did.

The clank of boots on the floor was hard to miss.

She lunged forwards—"_I said stop!_"—but wasn't fast enough to stop Qi'ra from spinning the seal on the door and swinging it open—

And _dozens _of bucket heads poured in.

Jyn swore, bringing up her blaster to pick off those troopers one by one—the only advantage they had here was that the door was narrow, only fit one at a time, and they kept tripping on the high ridge—but several had already made it in. The slaves served some sort of barrier at least, _flinging_ themselves at them with a ferocity Jyn had to admire, but there were a _lot_ of them, and they had blasters, and there were enough slaves that every time a trooper fired _someone_, at least, got hit, and—

R2-D2 squawked loudly. He ejected oil from one of his ports again and zapped as many as he could hit, jabbing even more with his pike but again, there were _so many_—

"Why are there so many?" Jyn demanded of Qi'ra. "The briefing said—"

"Clearly the briefing was _wrong_," she yelled back, "and from what Aggadeen said earlier, maybe they even knew we were coming!"

Jyn swore again and charged forwards.

The sheer audacity of the motion shocked at least a few troopers. She shot several and yanked her stun baton from at her waist to crash it into them; they fell into each other like white, armoured pins. A slight movement behind her; she pivoted, shot three more and dodged a shot, letting it go wide to impact the troopers behind her, but they were _everywhere_—

Except in one place.

"There's an opening!" she shouted. It was at one of the doors to the main reactor, a little further away, but it was less heavily guarded. "Go, go, go!"

Qi'ra was already sprinting for it by the time she finished and, after a moment's hesitation, staring with wide, glassy eyes at their fallen companions, the slaves followed too. R2-D2 screeched after them.

The comlink in Jyn's helmet began to beep.

"_What_, Skywalker?" she hissed. "We've walked into—"

"A trap, I know. I just took on three _Inquisitors_ without a lightsaber." Leia's voice was snappish—in the way of one who was exhausted, and had no patience left for life's idiosyncrasies. "I'm heading to—"

"Find a way to get to the _Star_," Jyn ordered, "and we'll meet you there. If you don't, we're leaving without you."

Leia drawled, though the fact she was out of breath extracted some of its power: "Yes, ma'am."

Then they were out and the corridors zipped past in a grey and silver blur; Jyn hoped Qi'ra knew where she was going, because she was no longer sure her bearings were accurate; from what she could tell, they seemed to be heading _away_—

She ducked as shots rang out after them, and tried to ignore the cries.

"Here!" Qi'ra skidded to a halt in front of a broad set of doors and jabbed the button to open them. Jyn followed her inside—she had to; the troopers were gaining—but her mouth was open to criticise, to correct, to complain—

Then she shut it.

The room—not quite warehouse, not quite hangar—was full of. . .

"Speeder bikes." Qi'ra smiled grimly and tossed herself up onto one. Jyn took a moment to let R2-D2 hoist himself onto the end of a bike before she followed suit. The slaves did too.

"Which way to the _Star_?" Jyn shouted over the noise of their engines.

Qi'ra shouted back: "Follow my lead!"

They burst out of the hall in the same instant that the troopers managed to burst into it.

* * *

It wasn't a _good_ speeder Leia had found near Vilrein's office, so battered and beaten down and broken Luke would cry if he set eyes on it. But it got her to the ship well enough.

She arrived moments behind what looked like a gaggle of speeder bikes and flew right up to Jyn and Qi'ra, leaping off the speeder before it had even stopped moving. "Did you set the charges?"

"Yes—"

"No thanks to you," Jyn glowered, "where were you?"

Leia glowered right back. "I told you, I had a few _Inquisitors_ to take care of—now, is this everyone?"

"Everyone who _survived_."

Leia swallowed at that. She tried not to dwell on it. "So now we just get Wedge and Biggs and _get the hell_—" She froze.

Jyn scoffed. "Oh, what now—"

"Something's wrong," she said, casting her gaze around. She couldn't sense Wedge and Biggs, but she _could_ sense. . .

Qi'ra asked, "Are you _sure_, Leia—"

"Observant, little sorceress."

A dozen heads swivelled to stare up at the source of the voice—a woman standing casually on top of the ship, one hand up—but Leia was the only one who truly _glared_.

She wasn't a large woman, not by any means, yet the cocky tilt of her head betrayed how well she could handle herself regardless. Brown hair, tan skin, a circuit-like tattoo snaking up her aloft arm holding what looked like a detonator. . .

Leia hissed, "_Aphra_."

Aphra's nose wrinkled. "That's _Doctor Aphra_ to you."

"Not from what I've heard," Leia shot back. She had not, in fact, heard anything of the sort, but Aphra's insecurities about her doctorate screamed loudly in her mind the moment she thought about it, and she couldn't help but take a petty satisfaction in that.

Still. Aphra had a history of working for her father. She needed to—

"Ah ah, not so fast, little sorceress. Drop that blaster right now."

"Or what?" Leia challenged.

Aphra shrugged. "You're all standing in a field of micro-mines," she informed her. She waved her arm. "No prizes for guessing what this is for." Her voice turned flat. "Drop your weapons."

Leia dropped them. So did. . . everyone else.

"Leia," Qi'ra asked, "do you know this woman?"

"Oh yeah, _Leia_ and I go way back," Aphra cut in. "Used to work for her father a lot—still _do_ work for her father, in fact, which brings me to why I'm here."

She smiled. "Give me the girl and I'll let you all go before the factory blows."

"And why do you want her?" one of the slaves challenged. Leia winced.

"Her father wants her back, and I've been hired to do it for him." Aphra, Leia decided, was far too fond of theatrics. "Now, have you made your decision? One girl, against—"

Leia saw the spark of blue, the discharge, before she saw Aphra fall. And Aphra fell _hard_, right off the top off the ship onto the junk it was landed on. Strangely enough, Leia did not feel inclined to slow her fall.

Instead, she turned to the pile of junk the shot had come from—and stared.

Some of the slaves murmured: "It's her."

Leia snapped, "Vilrein."

Vilrein smiled self-deprecatingly, ignoring the blaster Leia suddenly had levelled at her. She tossed her own away. "It's good to see you too, my lady."

"What do you want," Leia said.

Vilrein just moved her head minutely. "I have something for you. From your brother."

All time stood still.

Slowly—_excruciatingly slowly_, she thought, but she couldn't bring herself to walk faster—Leia walked towards her.

When she was close enough, she hissed, "_What_?"

Vilrein held out her palm. Lying in the centre of it was an innocuous-looking datachip.

Leia took it reverently.

"Your brother gave it to his new bodyguard," Vilrein said, "to give it to one of the slaves. I didn't think they'd be able to get it to you, so I took it myself."

"Why?" Leia demanded.

Vilrein shrugged—a casual gesture that didn't fit her sharp, professional image at all.

"I can't say I'm a fan of the Emperor's methods," she said. "But from what I saw, I was a fan of yours."

Leia's hand closed around the chip.

"I see," she said. "So—what will you do now?"

Vilrein shrugged again, that same irreverent gesture. "Return to my office."

"I destroyed your office."

Her lips twitched. "I noticed."

"You'll return anyway?"

"I'll return to the factory, at least."

"The factory is about to _blow_." Leia leaned in. "You're far more use to me _alive_ than dead."

"As you say: the factory is about to blow. I will be punished anyway. And I will not force those escaped slaves to suffer my presence any longer, so I cannot go with you."

"Then find another ship." Leia tilted her head towards Aphra's limp body; Qi'ra and Jyn was manhandling it on board. She figured the Rebellion would have some _questions_ for that woman. "Our dear doctor must have one nearby."

Vilrein smiled sadly. "I can't fly."

Leia narrowed her eyes.

Lifted her chin.

"Then I will," she said, and it was more command than offer. She marched over to Jyn and Qi'ra by the lowered ramp; she could just hear Wedge and Biggs groaning, starting to stir, inside.

"I'm going to take Aphra's ship"—she'd seen it before; it was chaos, but flyable—"and drop Vilrein off somewhere we can use her later. I'll meet you back at base as soon as possible."

"On your own again?" Jyn asked, eyebrows raised, but Qi'ra waved her off.

"Of course," she said. There was something in her smile that was a little sharper than necessary—sadness, or bitterness, or exhaustion, Leia couldn't tell. "We'll see you back there."

Artoo squealed loudly.

Leia frowned down at him. "You want to come too?"

He made a self-satisfied beep, light flashing dark blue.

"I do not need a _co-pilot_."

A buzz.

"Fine, then." She turned on her heel and marched over to Vilrein. From the top of the nearest junk pile, she scanned the area: oh, there was the _Ark Angel_, as twisted and odd-looking as ever.

In the distance, the factory exploded.

"Let's get out of here," Leia grumbled. "I've been sick of this place since we arrived."


	42. Machines and the Metaphysical

Leia settled into the pilot's chair and grimaced at the controls, but lifted them off and out of atmo. It wasn't until Artoo beeped in enquiry about what coordinates he should plug in that Leia actually stopped to think about it.

"Vilrein?" she called back into the hold.

Vilrein paused in her perusal of Aphra's many, _many_ dangerous droids. "My lady?"

"Where should we take you?" Leia asked. "Where can you lie low? With any luck, the Emperor will think you died in the explosion."

Vilrein was quiet.

Leia pressed, "Have you got any family? Someone who might take you in?"

"I have a brother," Vilrein admitted. "And two nieces, on my homeworld. They might help."

"Alright," Leia turned back to the navicomputer as Artoo made to insert his arm into it. "What's your homeworld?"

Vilrein hesitated.

Then she said, "Jedha."

* * *

Hyperspace was always hypnotising.

Luke's datachip burned a hole in her pocket. Her hand hovered over it for what seemed like hours, eyes stubbornly riveted to the oscillating, coruscating blue lights beyond the viewport. It was fascinating, and beautiful, and Leia did not reach for the datachip.

There were plenty of machines around her that could read it, show it, Aphra's love of technology and need for it in play, but she did not insert it into any of them to see what her brother—her brave, selfless, missed brother—had to say about it.

She could not.

She was so focused on the stars that when someone _did_ approach her from behind, she jerked upright in shock, feet instinctively coming down from their perch on the console to land on the floor.

But they took a moment to _find_ the floor, because there was a droid down there.

Leia relaxed. "Artoo."

He whistled something. Leia's binary was pretty rusty, and he seemed to be using an older strain of it than the droids she used to deal with in the Empire, so she didn't quite catch the detail of what he said. But she caught enough.

She sighed gently. "No— no, it's fine, I don't need you to play it for me."

Artoo buzzed and rolled forwards. He extended his arm and plugged it into the console. A moment later, Aurebesh text scrolled across a small screen.

OTHER AVAILABLE COMPUTER IS IN USE ?

Leia shook her head. "No, I'm not using any of the others here yet."

A twitter. YOU ARE OF THE SAME LINE AS SKYWALKER, LUKE ?

Interesting, Leia thought, how _production line_, binary's closest approximation of _immediate family unit_, translated so well to terms of blood lines and family trees. "He's my brother, yes. My twin brother."

INFORMATION ALREADY RECORDED.

She rolled her eyes. "If you already knew, why did you ask?"

But he wasn't finished. FILE FROM 7958 C.R.C: CONSTRUCTION OF SKYWALKER, LUKE AND SKYWALKER, LEIA. MAKERS: NABERRIE, PADMÉ; AMIDALA, PADMÉ AND SKYWALKER, ANAKIN. LOCATION: ROOM 22B, HOSPITAL FACILITY, POLIS MASSA.

"You—" Leia shook her head. "What?"

FILE READS—

"I know what you were talking about! But. . ." She frowned. "You were there when I was born?"

STATEMENT ALREADY GIVEN.

"Well, kriff you too, I was just asking—"

LANGUAGE INAPPROPRIATE FOR SITUATION; AGAINST PREDICTED PARAMETERS OF MAKERS.

She glared. "Are you threatening to tell _my parents_ because I _swore_?"

That twittering sound again. She was pretty sure it was laughter.

RETURN TO PRIMARY OBJECTIVE, he said when he finally stopped sniggering. Which, to be fair, was a solid minute later. YOU WILL NOT IMMEDIATELY OPEN FILE OF SKYWALKER, LUKE?

"Oh no you don't! I asked you if you were there when I was born."

CONFIRMATION ALREADY—

"Yes, I _know_." Kark, but this was a sassy droid. "But—why? You're Bail Organa's droid."

ORGANA, BAIL WAS ALSO PRESENT.

She snorted. "I'm sorry," she said, "_what_? That stuck up politician—"

PLUS KENOBI, OBI-WAN AND UNKNOWN, YODA.

She raised her eyebrows, despite herself—_Kenobi_, she wasn't surprised about, even half expected, but. . . _Yoda_? She hadn't expected that.

"Please, Artoo, actually answer my questions this time." She sighed. "_Why were you at my birth._"

SKYWALKER, ANAKIN TRANSPORTED ME TO LOCATION: MUSTAFAR. KENOBI, OBI-WAN TRANSPORTED ME AND AMIDALA, PADMÉ (PLUS SKYWALKER, LUKE AND SKYWALKER, LEIA, BEFORE ASSEMBLAGE) OFF PLANET, TO LOCATION: POLIS MASSA.

"Still! Why did my father take Bail Organa's droid to Mustafar!"

PREVIOUS OWNER: SKYWALKER, ANAKIN.

Leia tilted her head. "_My father_ owned you? And gave you to _Organa_?"

ORIGINAL OWNER: AMIDALA, QUEEN.; AMIDALA, SENATOR. PADMÉ; NABERRIE, PADMÉ AMIDALA.

Leia shook her head. Maybe she should just stick to interpreting. Reading the literal words on the screen made her head hurt. "So, you belonged to my mother? Then my father? And he gave you to Organa?"

AMIDALA, PADMÉ TRANSFERRED ME TO ORGANA, BAIL WHEN SHE, SKYWALKER, LUKE AND SKYWALKER, LEIA WERE TRANSPORTED TO LOCATION: TATOOINE.

"I see." She hummed. "You know, there would've been plenty of use for an R2 unit on the farm; she should've kept you."

OBJECTION: SAND WOULD CORRUPT MY PARTS.

Leia had to laugh. "That it would," she said. "That it would."

* * *

They talked for a good few hours longer, Leia trying to weasel as many stories out of this enigmatic droid—she wondered if Padmé had had a plan, sending _this_ droid on a mission with her—as possible, and Artoo dodging by nitpicking her questions, insulting her, her father, her mother, her faults as a member of an organic species and, on a particularly memorable point, blowing an electronic raspberry.

(He'd never once insulted Luke, though. She was impressed; he was a lot cannier than he let on.)

By the end of it, the datachip in her pocket was lighter.

But she still couldn't bring herself to look at it.

YOU REQUIRE A PORT FOR THE FILE OF SKYWALKER, LUKE ?

She sighed. "No, Artoo."

He ran over her foot.

"Ow!"

YOU REQUIRE A PORT FOR THE FILE OF SKYWALKER, LUKE. He nudged her foot again, a little threateningly.

"I think _you_ just want to see the message, you nosy little tin can," she grumbled. He was suspiciously silent. "Fine."

She drew it out of her pocket. It was. . . _so small_, the size of her thumbnail at most; she had one heart-stopping moment where she considered what might have happened if she'd lost it.

Then she held it out to Artoo. "Where should I insert it?"

He spun his dome until he was showing the slots to put smaller files into. But she frowned.

"Do you have the right ports for this sort of datachip?"

He squawked in offence. I AM EQUIPPED WITH THE MOST MODERN REPUBLIC ADAPTATIONS.

"_Republic_ adaptations. That might work for larger files, but the main Imperial businesses changed the shape and format of their smaller datachips five years ago, to better account for glitches and allow for more storage. All droids were updated. Were you not?"

I AM AN EXPERIENCED MODEL WITH A PROCESSOR FASTER THAN ANY OTHER DUE TO 30 STANDARD YEARS OF—

"So, you're out of date?"

I HAVE EVERY FUNCTION AND COMPONENT NEEDED FOR EVERY POSSIBILITY.

"Except now?"

He blew an electronic raspberry again.

She laughed and rolled her eyes. "Guess we'll have to use one of Aphra's machines then, and hope she hasn't rigged it to blow up in our faces."

PROBABILITY IS LOW. SHE HAD NO INDICATING FACTORS THAT HER SHIP WOULD BE HACKED, AND THAT MODEL CONTAINS NO FIREPOWER WITH WHICH TO "BLOW UP".

"Thank you for your reassurances." Leia still eyed the console—which, to be fair, she could immediately tell _did _have the right data ports for this—with unease.

The datachip was back to burning hot in her hand.

Artoo whistled. NOW IS THE OPTIMAL TIME FOR THE FILE TO BE OPENED.

"Why?" she asked, tearing her gaze away from that little scrap of metal and plastisteel.

Just when Artoo meant to whistle his reply, the indicating light on the console began to flash. There were approaching Jedha.

"Because we're about to drop out of hyperspace?" Leia asked grimly. "Well, too late now." She pushed herself to her feet, shoved the datachip back in her pocket only half-reluctantly, and called out, "Vilrein?"

The response was instantaneous: "Yes, my lady?"

"We're about to arrive at Jedha. Whereabouts does your brother live?"

Vilrein appeared in the doorway of the cockpit, large, dark eyes steady. They meant Leia's gaze as she said, quietly, "On the other side of the moon to the holy city. I'll guide you in."

* * *

They made it to Vilrein's village relatively easily; while there was a heavy Imperial presence on the moon, it was thickest around Jedha City, and they had no interest in the rural settlements. Kavetha reminded her of Anchorhead in that way: it was built atop a small mesa, instead of straight into the desert sands, but it was small, it was close-knit and it was down-to-earth. She didn't know whether she liked or despised it for it.

She glanced sideways at Vilrein for a few seconds after they landed, when the brownish sand was still puffing around the _Ark Angel_. Her face was that stoic Imperial calm, unreadable, but suddenly Leia was wondering how a woman from such a remote village had got this far—and how she felt about sinking back into such obscurity.

Leia's circumstances meant she thought of Tatooine as harsh, but home. It meant childhood; it meant innocence; it meant love without darkness.

Would she still feel that way if she'd lived there her whole life?

Would Luke?

"Do you want me to escort you in?" Leia asked. "Or wait here while you go alone, in case your brother—"

"He'll take me in," Vilrein said with a quiet certainty. "He's got no love of the Empire—he'll be glad I finally left it behind. Came home."

"But he'll be a bit resentful too?" Leia asked.

Vilrein gave her a surprised look. "Are you reading my mind?"

"No," Leia said. "I didn't need to."

After a moment, Vilrein smiled. "Thank you, my lady," she said, offering her hand. "It was an honour to work with you."

"I hope to work with you again," Leia replied, taking her hand and shaking it firmly. "Sometime."

A wry quirk of her lips. "Sometime."

Leia nodded. "I'll escort you out."

Artoo, thankfully, said nothing as she hit the button to lower the ramp and they both stood there for a moment, staring out at the desert horizon. It was dotted with other mesas, rock formations that curved and whirled in interesting patterns.

It was _cold_ too—colder than Tatooine, certainly. Wind blew up the ramp and scattered sand everywhere; considering this wasn't her ship, Leia couldn't bring herself to care.

Her gaze was still riveted to one of the rock formations. The shape of the face of the rock, the curve of a ridge around it. . .

Well. It looked like a hooded face.

"Vilrein?" she called out. The woman paused at the bottom of the ramp. "What's that?"

She turned to see what she was pointing at.

"That's. . . the closest Basic translation for what we call it would be _the sorcerer_," she said. "It was a Jedi Temple—or rather, the original one of Jedha. It's ancient. They moved to the Holy City centuries ago, which is why the Empire's so focused on wiping their presence out _there_, though the Empire has certainly been here too. But there wasn't anything for them to find here: the kyberite veins have all but run dry, and I'm told the Holy City always had a better connection to the Force anyway.

"That was what the Guardians of the Whills used to preach," she conceded, "at least."

Leia stretched out with her feelings.

It _hurt_—Force, the kyber veins, the blood of this planet, _hurt_ with how the Empire had ransacked and brutalised and pillaged it. But that mesa. . . that still quavered with light.

It was calling to her.

"I believe them," she said.

Vilrein nodded, and walked away.

Once she was gone, Leia lifted up the ship and made for that mesa.

She had a feeling. . .

And she needed a new lightsaber, after all.

* * *

Leia wrapped up in whatever spare clothes she could find in Aphra's quarters before she ventured into the halls of the Temple. She looked like an adventurous young archaeologist herself, but at least she was prepared.

She supposed.

Artoo kicked up a fuss.

"No, droids can't come into the Jedi Temple," she declared. He squawked his indignance, text shooting across the screen almost faster than she could read it. SKYWALKER, ANAKIN HAD SIMILAR GLITCHES AND HE—

"Lived to ruin another day," Leia said dryly. "I'm going into that temple. I need you to stay behind and guard the ship."

AGAINST WHAT VIRUS? SAND?

"It's a very dangerous virus," Leia agreed solemnly, and turned away to jog down the ramp before she read the undoubtedly explicit translation of whatever Artoo shrieked.

She approached the honey-coloured stone with. . . some trepidation, she had to admit.

She could see no entrance, and when she reached out with the Force. . .

_There is an entrance,_ the Force whispered, like whispers fading to an echo fading to a breeze. _Beneath you, beneath you, beneath you_.

_Then I have to bring it up_, Leia thought.

She felt for it—there it was, right underneath her as promised. Careful to only use the light side, she wrapped the Force around it and _pulled_. . .

_It won't work_.

She snapped her head up. "Who's there?"

Artoo whistled something mocking from the top of the ramp. She'd forgotten he was still there.

_I am, Leia._

A breeze tugged a loose strand of hair out of her plait and tucked it behind her ear. _I always have been_.

That sounded fishy, but she couldn't afford to be distracted now, so she asked, "How can I make it work?"

_This temple is like one of many: on Lothal, on Malastare. It requires a master _and_ an apprentice to open it._

Her shoulders slumped. "Then I can't do it."

_I taught you to shield your mind when you and your brother were only a few years old,_ the voice said. _I think I count_.

_Reach out again_.

She did.

She closed her eyes, extended her hand, and reached out.

This time, the Force. . . flowed through her, sweeter and clearer than before, like the ring of a bell once cracked, now mended. She could sense another presence nearby, tugging and coaxing, and then. . .

There was a great rumbling.

Sand shifted beneath her feet.

And, when she opened her eyes, the mesa was _rising_.

It rose straight out of the ground, the sheer face of the carved Jedi's forehead rising out of the ground and eclipsing the sunset until most of the face was visible, until. . .

Where the left eye was, a tunnel. Sand poured out of and into it.

Her breath caught without realising it.

"Thank—"

She turned to her left, to see a blueish figure gazing at her, smiling. She didn't recognise him until he faded, becoming one with violet Jedhan dusk.

She said, "Old Ben?"

* * *

The inside of the temple was even colder than the outside. She imagined it would be cold even under the beat of the hot sun during the day; she was far enough underground the moment she stepped inside and the entrance closed behind her that the sun's light could never reach her here.

She stood there while the rock shuddered and shivered underneath her, not bothering to turn to watch the earth rise outside to swallow her and the cavern up again, but keeping her gaze on the sliver of light that slowly shrank to nothing, feeling the sand gush in around her ankles. She could still see—there was a faint, very faint, light that seeped into the honey stone but seemed to have no discernible source—but it was suddenly much darker without that blade of direct sunlight.

She walked forwards anyway.

There was. . . a tug, an impulse, a compulsion, so she followed it onwards.

Up ahead, the tunnel hooked to the left. She followed it, her hand coming up to brush the stone as she passed; the horizontal layers of rock shed slightly different coloured grit on her palm: red, silver, brown. . .

There was another turn, the other way. She did the same with her right hand, letting the calluses on her fingertips brush it this time, so her gaze was on the wall when she noticed the wind.

It was hot.

It was hot—and dry, though that wasn't the surprising part. It blew in her face, blew her hair back—her hair, which was suddenly in two plaits instead of just the one, half-falling out so thick locks flapped around her face in the desert wind.

She pushed them aside, squinted, wincing in the light of the sun.

No.

The light of the _suns_.

When she reached out her right hand again, the wall of the temple had vanished. She was standing in the middle of miles upon miles of sand—paler and yellower than on Jedha—a veritable sea of sand dunes, and staring at—

At—

A white homestead.

Burnt and charred—no. Burning and charring.

From within those domes, the recess in the ground, she heard screams.

_"Leia!"_

She hadn't heard that voice in eleven years but she ran forwards as if it'd been yesterday. "_Aunt Beru!_"

More screams.

And she heard it now: the hum of a lightsaber. The rasp of a respirator.

She reached the door, slipped into the entrance dome and down the steps, peered around—

And flattened herself against the wall when the shadow stalked past, death in hand. She knew that silhouette.

It passed soon, in the direction of where the room she and Luke had shared was. It was a tiny, tiny room, they'd never have both been able to fit in it for much longer, and she didn't think the shadow would find much in it so she ran because it could come back.

"Aunt Beru?" she whispered. "Uncle Owen?"

Then, the last name, the most important name: "Luke?"

There was no answer.

So she slipped out from her hiding place in the shadows and shuffled across the open sand to the garage, where the screams had come from. Smoke belched from it.

Tossing a look over her shoulder, again and again and again, she crept in.

And sobbed.

There were two bodies crumpled to the sand-dusted floor, eyes wide and unseeing. She whimpered and collapsed to her knees next to one. Her uncle, Owen.

She tugged his head and shoulders into her lap.

Bent her head over him.

And _screamed_.

There was no return of the respirator, no hitch in the wind in response to her shrieking grief. But there _was_ a twitch of the body in her arms, and suddenly there was a hand reaching up to her.

She folded it in her own on instinct, and only then did she realise that the hand was small, soft—softer than hers, calloused and battle-worn; certainly softer than her uncle's. She tucked it into her palm and only then did she look down.

Her own eyes—young and wide and terrified—stared back at her. Tears wetted her—both of their—cheeks.

"I'm scared," young Leia whispered.

"I know," Leia whispered back. "I know."

"It _hurts_," young Leia insisted. Leia glanced down; the front of her off-white desert wear, swaddled around her in a way that made her seem even smaller than she was, dripped red. She touched her fingers to the fabric.

Then Leia pressed her lips together and tried not to cry. "I know," she repeated in a desperate whisper; that was all she could do, to comfort a dying little girl. She made to sweep back a thick lock of dark hair from the girl's face—Leia's hair was back in its single plait now; it was her young self whose hair was nearly falling out—but it just smeared blood over her forehead. "I know, little one, I know."

"Is—" The other hand, still strong and forceful despite being on the threshold of death's embrace, pushed at her chest. "Is Luke— Where's my brother—"

_Luke_.

Leia blinked back tears, and failed; they streamed down anyway.

She resolutely did not glance at the other corpse—the one that _had_ been Aunt Beru—but the glint of blond in her peripheral vision disturbed her.

_That_ corpse was not twitching at all.

"He's fine," she murmured. The lie tasting worse than the smoke on her tongue, and from the look that canny little Leia gave her, it wasn't convincing either.

But the next part was.

"You'll see him again soon," she promised, brushing her hair back again, heedless of the blood on her forehead—the blood now staining Leia's borrowed clothes, too. "Soon. You'll be right with him."

It was a horrible, horrible thought.

But it meant that young Leia was smiling when she finally tilted her head back and lay still.

Leia shuddered.

And then she screamed again.

"My my," said a cool, clipped voice behind her. "I don't know what sort of vision _you_ are."

The sound of the respirator was gone, Leia realised.

The respirator was gone, but the shadow was back—here was the shadow, the monster; here was who it had always been.

Her own self stalked closer, dressed in the same dark garb she used to wear, a lightsaber bouncing at her hip. She walked like a predator stalking her prey.

Her eyes were the brightest gold.

"My own image," she mused, "dressed like an outlaw and looking like death warmed over?"

"At least I'm not wearing _black_ in a desert climate," Leia snapped. "It traps the heat, you know, _Leia_."

Leia barely had time to blink before the lightsaber was lit, hungry, and at her throat.

Sith lightsabers always sounded so much more _bloodthirsty_.

"That is no longer my name," her other self said. Her voice was calm, but eerily so—like the unnatural monotone of her father's vocoder.

The words, though, more than anything, were what gave Leia chills.

"Then what _is_ your name?" she challenged.

Her other self gave a smile that was more like the flash of a knife than an expression of joy.

"Once I've defeated you, my final vision, and returned to kill my master?" she said. "_Empress_."

Leia froze.

She—

She knew that. . . plan.

That ambition.

That revelry.

The dark side nipped at the back of her neck, and she wasn't sure if it was hunting her or embracing her.

"I see," she said carefully. She rolled away from young Leia's corpse, got to her feet and backed away from the girl—because she _was_ a girl; eighteen suddenly seemed a lot younger when she was looking at her own face, her own yellowed eyes, and it was a person about to kill and torment and destroy. Her other self didn't twitch to follow her; just shifted her lightsaber so it was at her side, still ready to hurt and maim and swing.

Leia kept backing away, and then her eyes shifted to the tiny, tiny corpse she'd nearly stumbled over, and fresh, cold horror flooded her.

"I'm the last of your visions?" she asked.

Her other self tutted impatiently. She took a threatening step closer, but Leia couldn't focus on that. "_Yes_."

"So, you killed my— _our_ younger self?" She struggled to get the words out. The blood was still drying on her front. "_Why?_"

"Because she was small, and weak, and foolish enough to trust me," she snapped. "She's dead now. I have grown beyond her. She's gone.

"And _now_," she eyed Leia up and down, unimpressed, and continued stalking forwards, "I'm going to grow beyond whatever _you_ represent—"

"And Luke?" Leia asked.

Her other self froze.

She uttered, "What did you say?"

"You killed our past self," Leia reiterated. "You also killed Luke's past self. Why?"

A hideous sneer twisted her face. "Because he was weak too, and has only ever held my brother back, until—"

"Really?" Leia stepped forwards there—belligerently, bravely, _insanely_. "Until what?"

Her other self _glared_. "Until he was unable to cast off his chains and he paid the price."

_That_ sent Leia's heart racing again, tears pressing the backs of her eyes; but they were furious tears, tears of hate. Not despair.

"He was supposed to be my second in command," she continued. Rage rushed through her voice; it scraped like needles against stone. "He was supposed to _rule the galaxy with me_, he—"

Leia threw out her hand.

The moment the lightsaber landed in her hand she leapt forwards and drove the blade down, ready to cleave that girl's head—her other self's head—her _sick, twisted self's_ head in two—

But there was another red blade blocking the blow.

Leia jerked back and spun to avoid the incoming attack. She kicked out on instinct but her other self dodged, and then dodged Leia's forward jab, her slice up.

Leia had already deflected another four hits before she recognised the hilt.

"That's our father's lightsaber," she grunted as she shoved back against their locked lightsabers.

Her other self smiled.

"How—" She disengaged her blade, staggering back. "How did you get that? He would _not_ have given—"

"Oh," her other self promised, "he didn't."

A slash of red and Leia ducked frantically, spinning on her heel as she backed up again, eye on herself.

This was never going to work. They knew each other far, far too well.

They _were_ each other.

"He didn't," Leia repeated.

"Of course not." Her other self stalked the same circle they were keeping each other at a distance in, in that garage filled with black, black smoke. Young Leia's and young Luke's bodies formed the centre.

Her voice turned more bitter than a rotten jogan. "If only Luke hadn't insisted so fiercely on defending such a useless wretch of a man," she spat, "I would still have my enforcer."

All the breath left Leia at once.

Because this— this _version of her_—

She had—

"You killed Luke," Leia breathed. No_._

_No_.

She could _never_—

Even drowning in darkness, revelling in it, she _wouldn't_—

"He _insisted_," her other self hissed, "in getting in my way."

Leia lunged forwards. "_You killed Luke_."

There was a frenzy to her motions now; she was repeating steps on instinct, muscle memory, but there was _power _to it: block, deflect, jab, parry, block, deflect, jab, parry, slash, swipe, stab, drive, _cleave_—

Her other self was matching her blow for blow; they were the same person, the same (corrupted, twisted but identical) heart, and the pain that dwelled in one—

Well.

But Leia missed Luke so much it hurt because _she was away from him_. She was going to save him. She _trusted _him.

Her other self missed him so much it hurt because _she'd_ _killed him_.

And _she couldn't handle it_.

She was falling back on the same old defensive patterns she and Luke had drilled each other on so mercilessly; the same patterns that worked far better when you had a twin at your side to back you up; the same patterns that Leia, who'd abandoned the dark side, who'd not seen or duelled Luke in _months_, who'd spent days and weeks being drilled by the Grandmaster of the Jedi Order in how to not fight like a Sith, had long since grown beyond.

She knocked her father's lightsaber from her hands and slashed it in two. the two pieces clattered to the floor.

Her other self just snarled and ran at her, weapon or no weapon—

And Leia caught her in midair.

And _squeezed_.

She finally understood what her father found so satisfying about it.

Her other self choked, eyes going wide as she purpled, hands vainly clutching at her throat. Leia bared her teeth and squeezed more—

"Leia."

Leia didn't jump, didn't drop her, didn't loosen her grip. But she stopped tightening it.

"Leia."

She turned her head.

The worn, sun-lined face of her aunt greeted her and she nearly sobbed there and then, her smile the warmest thing she'd seen since she'd left Tatooine for the first time.

"Leia," she said, resting a hand on her shoulder. "We taught you to be protective. Not vengeful."

Leia stared at her for a moment, lips forming words not even she could understand. Then she jumped at a hand on her other shoulder and turned.

The tanned, wrinkled face of her uncle was smiling at her too.

"We taught you to be pragmatic," he said gruffly. Tears lined his eyes as he looked at her, all grown up. "Not cruel."

Leia took a breath. Took another breath. It swept in and out of her like the winds scouring the desert.

Like the rasp of her father's respirator as she crawled into his lap in the middle of the night, terrified and small and feeling so, so along.

_Was it the desert again?_

_Yes,_ she thought. _It's always the desert. The desert is where I was made._

"We taught you to love," finished a whisper. She had no idea who said it—if it was her aunt, her uncle, her other self, her young self, or even the Force itself, planting the message right between her eyes until she could ignore it no longer. "Not to hate."

She dropped her.

Her other self crashed to the floor, gasping in air through lips that were half blue. She flinched back as Leia knelt in front of her; when she took her hands, she made several futile attempts to pull away.

"I'm sorry," Leia whispered.

"I don't need your _pity_—"

"I'm sorry," Leia went on, "that you will never see Luke again. That you will never see our father again. That you will likely never see the light again."

Leia made to brush some of her hair behind her ear, like she had to young Leia—in a way, they were so similar. Both had no idea of the reality of the galaxy—how evil it could be, but also how good—and both were so, so scared.

And lonely.

And lost.

"I'm sorry," she murmured, "that you have no family left."

Her other self hissed, "I will be _Empress_."

Leia took her cheeks in her hands and kissed her forehead.

She said, "You will be alone."

And when she blinked, it was all gone.

The other self, the bodies, the desert that had forged her. She knelt in the cold stone of the Jedhan temple, head still bowed, tears still chilly on her cheeks.

There was a silver light ahead of her.

She looked up.

There was a figure standing in front of her—a woman. Fairly old, with grey-dark hair and lines of both laughter and pain in her face, around her dark eyes. When she spoke, it was with a faint accent Leia had never heard before, though it felt like the most familiar thing in existence.

"You have done so well, my grandchild," she said. She smiled broadly at her. "I am so very proud of you."

Leia's breath caught.

"Are you Shmi Skywalker?" she asked.

"No," she said, though she smiled with her face and spoke with her voice. "But I have something for you."

And Leia both understood and didn't understand at all, but she nodded sombrely and when Shmi-who-was-not-Shmi held out her hand, Leia accept the gift.

The kyber crystal glowed in her hands like a condensed star.

Shmi-who-was-not-Shmi was waiting for her to say something.

"I am done destroying," Leia vowed. She reached for her pack, slung over her shoulders—for the pieces of her old lightsaber that she kept there. "Now I'm ready to build."

Her companion nodded proudly and Leia set to work.

* * *

When she emerged, Artoo shrieked at her for worrying him.

She waved his worries off and refused to speak about. . . any of it—even the new lightsaber that bounced at her waist.

"If it's really been as long as you say," she said coyly, "then we need to be heading back, right? Before anyone gets worried."

Artoo grumbled his disapproval but set about plugging the coordinates into the navicomputer.

* * *

It was on the flight back that Leia found herself fingering Luke's message again.

This time, she actually slipped it into the console and played the message. Hearing Luke's voice for the first time in weeks, even just as a part of the security code, simultaneously shattered her heart and stitched it back together.

He said, _"It's horrendous. Disgusting. Abominable."_

She frowned. It played again.

_"It's horrendous. Disgusting. Abominable."_

_"It's horrendous. Disgusting. Abominable."_

_"It's horrendous. Disgusting. Abominable."_

Realisation dawned.

And, in the way light creeps through window blinds at sunrise, Leia smiled.


	43. Messages

Coming back to Coruscant again was like trying to take a breath of fresh air and inhaling carbon monoxide. Luke choked the moment he came out of hyperspace and had to sit himself down on the bed in his quarters, bent over double, breathing deeply into his knees until the heavy, desperate breaths that racked him stopped.

He squeezed his eyes shut and closed his eyes. His button was hanging open at the collar.

"Skywalker?" Mara rapped on the door, but had the grace not to enter, or even try to open it at all. "We've arrived. Our master summons us to report alongside Tarkin about Cymoon."

Luke grimaced and tried not to think about that—about all the ways that could've gone wrong.

The moment they'd left the system, Han had reported that Vilrein had seen him coming out of the slaves' quarters.

If she'd found the message. . .

If Leia had failed. . .

If Leia had been _caught_. . .

The very thought had him suddenly throwing himself to his knees in the corner of the room. He hunkered down and retched quietly, gagging on bile, but the thick, thick _dread_ that hung around him in the Force didn't so much as lessen.

He felt ill.

But he pushed himself to his feet and stalked over to the door anyway. Mara raised a belligerent eyebrow when he opened it, then frowned. "You look ill."

"I am," he bit out, pushing past her. "We'll need to call a droid to clean up in there."

Mara wrinkled her nose. "If you insist. But the Emperor won't be kept waiting."

_He never is_. "I'm aware of that."

She frowned at him even further when he stepped out into the harsh bright light of the living room. "Did you sleep?"

He'd thrashed and screamed into his pillow for four nights straight. "Of course."

He was halfway to the door itself when she offered, "It's cold."

He paused.

Turned to face her.

"What?"

She turned her nose up at him and said, "It's cold on Coruscant at this time of year, in the area of the Imperial Palace; you ought to know that. If you're ill, should you really go out just wearing your uniform, without anything warmer?"

Luke grimaced, but the look in her eye said she wasn't about to let it go.

So he jogged back into his bedroom and grabbed. . .

The nearest cape he saw in his wardrobe.

Which was. . .

He ran his fingers over the constellations embroidered over the back before he tossed it round his shoulders and snuggled into it.

It reminded him of Leia.

It reminded him of _home_.

When he emerged he said, "What about you?"

"What?"

He huffed. "Are _you_ just gonna wear that pseudo-Inquisitor's uniform? It's not that warm; I know it's not."

She scowled. "_I_ am not ill."

"Doesn't mean you can't get cold."

She. . . paused, at that, and frowned at him again.

"I'm always cold," she said, and snapped her visor shut.

* * *

Mara had been right. It was cold on Coruscant.

Luke could feel it the moment the ramp of the shuttle lowered and everyone stood to attention, ready to depart. Tarkin was seated directly opposite him on the flight down; now he got to his feet stiffly and Luke scrambled to do it at the same time as him, his cloak snagging under his heel and catching at his throat, the chain constricting—

He fell back into his seat. His legs shook hard enough that it took several long seconds until he braced his hands on his knees and stilled them.

He could sense everyone's—Mara's, Han's, the troopers', _Tarkin's_—gazes on him. He flushed red.

_Force_, why was he so— so—

His hands were shaking now.

He _always_ had to be so—

"Get up," Tarkin snapped, and Luke pushed himself to his feet.

Staggered a bit, but stayed upright.

A cold wind swept through the shuttle bay, chilling the sweat already on the back of his neck.

He tried to hang behind as everyone walked in, proud and strong and arrogance lining every inch of their stern postures—Mara and Han even shifted to _let him_, concern radiating from the latter, as they flanked him on the right and left. But Tarkin stopped to wait for him, and so did the rest of the delegation.

The stormtroopers. The death troopers. The aides Luke had replaced, _and_ all the minor officers from the _Sovereign II_ who needed to be on Coruscant for whatever reason.

They all stopped and stared at him, like a judgemental wall of black, white and grey.

Tarkin inclined his head and clicked his tongue. "Keep up," he ordered.

Luke forced his strides to be _just_ a little longer, _just_ a little faster, until he was at Tarkin's side in a heartbeat. He swallowed; the man was quite a bit taller than him, and he seemed to block out the sun.

"We—and the Emperor—have already received word from Cymoon One that the factory was destroyed by the Rebel attack," he told him. His voice was harsh, and Luke made sure to keep his gaze straight ahead, lest he aggravate the man _more_.

But. . .

"_Destroyed_?" he whispered, quietly enough that his ecstasy was hidden in the hush. _Leia, Leia, Leia. . ._

"Indeed," Tarkin ground out. "The factory is destroyed, and its latest produce either looted or destroyed with it. The elite forces and the Inquisitors we stationed there are all _dead_, as is Director Vilrein."

"_Vilrein_?"

"_Yes_—must I repeat everything I say? She died in the explosion."

Horribly, Luke's first instinct was relief. She would not live to tell someone what suspicions she'd had—what she'd found—

But, quickly on its heels, was shame. No; _disgust_.

She had been a person.

She had even been a _good_ person—as far as good people in the Imperial system went, at least.

Joy was a disgusting thing to feel at her death.

What was wrong with him?

Tarkin continued, "This report will already be a humiliation and a. . . _chastisement_. Do _not_, boy, give him _any_ more of a reason to punish us."

Luke nodded, gaze still fixed on the looming door into the Palace, like a gaping maw. "Understood, sir."

"I can't emphasise how important this is. My reputation, my leadership on countless Imperial projects—"

"I said I understood, sir," Luke growled.

Tarkin hit him.

Cuffed the back of his head, _hard_, enough that Mara and Han had already moved to defend Luke before they processed what was happening. He could feel their gazes boring a hole into his back.

Luke's head rang.

He felt sick again.

_But Leia lives_, he thought. It helped, somewhat; at least the crippling terror could recede, though the supernatural dread remained. _Leia succeeded, and she lives. And if she has my message. . ._

_. . .she knows._

_That_ thought calmed him more than anything.

"_Your_ position is just as much at risk as mine," Tarkin hissed as they passed into the Palace proper, alcoves similar to the one Han had found him in a few weeks ago on either side. "Don't think that I don't know what happened—how you lost your hand. If His Majesty removes you from my care, it will only be to place you back into his, and _if he suspects you of petty, stupid treason again, you know exactly what he will do_."

Then Tarkin relaxed.

Patted him on the head, flattening his hair again into something approaching presentable. "Spinning this in as positive a way as possible is in _both_ our interests."

Mara didn't flinch at the open threat to Luke. He supposed she wouldn't.

In Han, though, he could sense a growing curiosity—and odd sense of defensiveness.

Luke found it in him to smile faintly, even as he blinked back tears.

But then there was a bitter, freezing cold presence reaching for him and smiling was an impossibility it was difficult to even dream about.

_Child_, Palpatine purred against his shields. _I'm so glad to see you again._

_Likewise, Master_, he found it in him to reply, but it tore him to pieces to say it. He knew that Palpatine could _feel_ his fear—was revelling in it.

Mara was right, Luke thought absently, pulling his cape tighter around him. It was cold in the Palace.

Then they came to the throne room doors and they were admitted.

More of the delegation had split off by now—the death troopers to one place, the aides and officers to another, only two stormtroopers remaining as a part of Tarkin's escort, still and silent. Luke tried not to paid them any notice; they hung back anyway as they entered the room, as did Mara and Han, and it was only Tarkin and Luke who approached the dais and knelt.

His father stood at Palpatine's right hand. Luke knew his gaze was riveted on him.

He wondered what he saw.

Palpatine was silent for two hundred and thirty one seconds after the door boomed shut. Luke counted with his eyes closed, like that would make anything go away.

"My friend," Palpatine said at last, and Luke knew he was addressing Tarkin. "Rise."

Tarkin did. Luke stayed kneeling, head almost right to the floor, and listened to their conversation only to distract from the pain in his neck.

"I trust you with my most important projects," Palpatine said silkily, "and you fail."

Tarkin said nothing.

So, Luke mused. His political acumen extended to knowing who _not_ to talk back to.

"Have you anything to say for yourself?"

Tarkin lifted his chin then, folded his hand behind his back, and reported: "I have sent you a report, Your Excellency, detailing the extensive security improvements we made to the factory, as well as the numerous troops—including three of your own Inquisitors—we left behind to assure the capture of the target, and the protection of the base. It is evident, however, that we underestimated her."

_People always do underestimate the two of you_, said a voice directly into Luke's head.

It was an _extremely _good thing Luke's face was turned entirely to the ground when he heard that.

"Clearly," Palpatine drawled. "But, Grand Moff Tarkin, I find myself concerned if any eighteen year old, no matter how _unique_, and her ragtag group of outlaws she calls _allies_ can outsmart you. . ."

_You look unwell, my son._

Luke gritted his teeth and couldn't resist the urge to shoot back— _No kidding_.

His father _leapt_ on that contact, however, no matter how begrudging it may be. _I understand you have suffered, so much, and I had no desire—_

_I'm sure you didn't_, Luke snarled. His right hand tightened.

His father saw it. _Luke. . ._

_What do you _want_?_

A pause.

_Nothing, son,_ came the deflated, de-motivated response. Luke, despite himself, was disappointed. _Only. . ._

_Is there _anything_ I can do?_

Luke blinked in shock.

_I am sorry about your sister. I am sorry about how I reacted. I am so, so sorry I handed you over to him._

_Is there _anything_ I can do?_

Luke froze.

Paused.

Took several deep breaths.

_Just tell me one thing,_ he said.

He sensed his father reaching for him eagerly. _Yes? Anything—_

_Did you torture me?_

There was a moment of utter silence.

Utter, stunned silence.

Out of the corner of his eye, Luke saw his father's head swivel to stare at Palpatine, draped on his throne.

_No,_ finally came the reply, tight with anger, writhing with fury, with the need to— _I. Did. Not._

Luke let out a breath.

_Who,_ his father asked_, told you that—_

And then Palpatine's gaze was on Luke.

"Do not fail me, Tarkin," he warned. "I will give you one more chance to show that my _special project _is in good hands; I suggest you depart _immediately_ to ensure that all is on schedule."

Tarkin said obsequiously, "Yes, Your Excellency."

"Now leave. "I wish to speak with young Luke."

Luke didn't look up despite the acknowledgement—his shoulders were in _agony_—but he could sense Tarkin's indignation.

He wanted to laugh.

"As you wish, Your Excellency," he said, then strode out again.

Palpatine did not make Luke wait two hundred and thirty one seconds. The moment the doors slammed shut, he said, "Rise, child."

Luke rose.

"Come closer." Palpatine beckoned, and Luke mounted the stairs to the dais, to stand before the throne, almost as if by compulsion.

His head was still bowed.

Finally, Palpatine said, "You claim to repent for your rebellious sins. You claim to want the capture of your sister, and either her return or her death. You claim to be loyal to me and my Empire, alone." A hand came up to caress Luke's cheek; one sharp fingernails dug right into the skin, drawing blood. "And yet the moment I send you out of my sight, your sister succeeds in destroying a factory I sent _you_ to reinforce.

"You understand how this must look, child."

Luke swallowed. He could still feel his father's enraged gaze on him, on his Emperor. "Yes, Master."

"Have you anything to say for yourself?"

He swallowed again. Made to shake his head, aborted the motion, then tried in a hoarse whisper: "I didn't help her. I did everything I was asked to do perfectly. I committed no sabotage, no murder, and I coordinated _nothing_ with her; I passed on no military secrets."

The truth rang in the Force. He knew Palpatine heard it.

His master hummed. "I believe you, child."

Luke let himself relax infinitesimally.

"_But_. . ." His nail dragged across Luke's cheek again, smearing blood. "You must understand how it _looks_."

His father took a step forwards from his position as the gargoyle in the shadows, the silent watcher, to say, "Master. . ."

Palpatine leaned in.

"I believe you had nothing to do with it," he whispered. "I believe that, despite whatever rebellious notions you still wrestle with in your heart—I know it's true and I care not, child, as long as you make sure that your Imperial pride always wins—you had nothing to do with this.

"But I know that you wanted to. And I know that next time you might."

He drew his hand back, and placed both hands on Luke's neck, then his shoulders, in the facsimile of a proud grandfather.

"So let me remind you," he said louder—for Vader's benefit, no doubt—"of the price of treason."

"_Master_," Vader burst out, striding forwards suddenly, "is this _necessary_—"

Palpatine threw Luke back—down the stairs, head hitting the floor with a sickening _thump_.

Luke barely had a moment to recover before the onslaught came.

* * *

They arrived back at base in the early morning, local time. Leia had napped just before they came out of hyperspace, so she was feeling fully alert and ready as she navigated them in.

Dried tears still caked her cheeks from when she'd watched that message—and from the second time she'd played it, just before reversion—but. . . that was alright.

Her mother would understand.

She brought the _Ark Angel _down in the hangar, being excruciatingly careful with it—Aphra's ship was as weird as she was—and sagged back in her seat when she could finally release the controls, a strange weight rolling off her shoulders. She could see not only Ahsoka but her mother standing in the entrance waiting for her, and it buoyed her step somewhat—her mother had come to her, for once, even for what had been (as far as Padmé knew) an insignificant mission.

It was that which spurred her on as she unbuckled her crash webbing, stuck her tongue out when Artoo twittered something childish, and jogged down the ramp. Luke's message bounced in her pocket on her left; her new lightsaber bounced on her belt on her right.

Padmé smiled broadly at her when she approached, a tinge of relief in her closed off Force presence. She reached for Leia's hands immediately; Leia, after a moment's shock, took them.

Artoo trundled right past them to a golden protocol droid standing further down the corridor. He was half turned towards them in a curious, pleasant manner, but then Artoo rammed into his (metal) shins and he squawked. "I see _you're_ back from wherever you went this time—"

"That's Threepio," Ahsoka supplied. Her voice somehow managed to be exasperated, fond and melancholy all at once. "He's Artoo's counterpart—a protocol droid. We were just using him to decrypt intel."

Leia nodded. "Aphra?" she asked. "What happened to her?"

"She's currently being held in one of our cells," Ahsoka supplied. "We're going to try to see if she'll give us any information on Vader later, but so far she's just having fun making faces in the one-way mirror."

Yeah. That sounded like Aphra.

Padmé squeezed her hands. "I'm glad you're safe," she said, and Leia wondered at the tremble in her voice. "And. . . you've got a new lightsaber?"

Leia didn't reach for it physically; she didn't want to let go of her mother's hands. But she detached it from her belt with the Force and let it hover for a moment; it looked very similar to her old lightsaber, but sharp-eyed people could see the slight modifications to shape, weight, balance she'd made—as well as the contrast between the new, silvery parts she'd scrounged together from the junk pile known as the _Ark Angel_ and the dark gunmetal of her original pieces.

"I dropped Governor Vilrein off at her brother's village on Jedha," Leia said. "There was an old Jedi Temple nearby—one with a vein of kyberite that hadn't yet run dry."

"And you got _in_?" Ahsoka asked. "Alone?"

Leia hesitated.

"I. . . had help," she admitted. "But it sounds crazy."

Ahsoka's smile was wry. "I doubt that whatever you say, _I'll_ find it crazy."

"Well then," Leia said baldly, "a glowing blue ghost of that crazy old wizard Ben Kenobi helped me open the temple."

Ahsoka laughed.

"Yeah," she said, "I've definitely heard crazier. I'll. . . try to explain _that_ to you later."

"Now," Padmé said. Her voice was suddenly urgent, but she turned to drape her arm around Leia's shoulders and move them slowly out of the hangar. "I hear— I heard you've had a message from—"

"Luke."

Padmé swallowed. "Yes."

"I— I have. I've watched it, and—" She laughed.

It was hysterical. It lacked humour. It was, in fact, more of a sob that expressed every ounce of built up sorrow, desperation and _relief_ that had been clogging the pathways to her heart since she left Luke in the cold, windswept airlanes of Coruscant.

She didn't know how to convey what she felt about what he'd said.

So she just steered her mother towards the nearest briefing room and gestured to them into it.

Padmé and Ahsoka took their places around the central table, the holoprojector there; Leia made sure to lock the door firmly behind them before she inserted the datachip into the (standard, Imperial-adapted, though they sat alongside some Republic-issue) ports. Immediately Luke's voice rang out, though no image appeared.

_"It's horrendous. Disgusting. Abominable."_

Ahsoka jumped. Padmé was frozen, staring into the empty space where the holo was about to appear like she—

Well.

Like she was about to hear and see a direct message from her long lost son.

Before the code request could loop again, Leia said calmly, "An affront to life itself."

"What?" Padmé murmured.

Without taking her eyes off the blue hologram now coalescing, Leia said, "The Death Star is."

The image that emerged was of her brother, looking ghastly and ghostly against the darkness of his surroundings, rings around his eyes. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor, leaning against what looked like the standard bunk of a high-ranking officer on a Star Destroyer, though the lights in whatever room he was in were dim.

He fiddled with a few more switches, and suddenly Leia could _hear_ him—hear the erratic rasp of his breathing, the tapping of the fingers on his (prosthetic?) right hand against his knee, almost hear the heartbeat she could _see_ hammering at the base of his throat, because—

His collar was open.

He'd materialised so he was facing straight at Padmé. Her hand came up to her mouth and she crumpled into it; Leia thought she might start to sob.

Luke looked like utter shavit, after all.

_"Leia,"_ he said. _"Ahsoka, M—"_ He swallowed harshly, looked away briefly, his cheeks and neck darkening slightly. _"Mother."_

Leia knew she wasn't imagining the slight—slight enough as to be almost unnoticeable—way his lips curved up when he got to say that.

And she knew she wasn't imagining Padmé's muffled sob, either.

_"I— I don't know what you've heard_._"_ He grimaced, his voice a beacon of pain, and Leia wanted to _hold him_— _"I don't know what you must think of me, but I guess— I guess that what this message is about. Telling you what I'm doing, so. . . whatever you think of me, you can think it based on the facts._

_"I did not return to the Empire. I will _never_"_—and Leia ought to be relieved at the fury, the vehemence, in that word, but in truth it just scared her to think what had put such rage in him at all—_"_ever_, return to the Empire. I promise. I just had to get out of that Force-forsaken cell, to do something _useful_. . ."_

A self-deprecating quirk of the lips.

_"I figured that spying again, as high as the risk would be, was the best way to go about it."_

Leia, for all that she'd seen it before, winced. Ahsoka grimaced fiercely—though she didn't look _that_ surprised, Leia noticed, eyes narrowing. Padmé didn't move at all, but her eyes welled with fresh tears.

_"I— My original plan was to get out of the cell through my pretence, grab as much information as I could, and run at the first chance I got,"_ Luke was saying now. His gaze couldn't quite meet the holoprojector—couldn't quite meet any of their eyes.

Leia empathised thoroughly with Padmé and Ahsoka when they both leaned forwards. "But. . .?"

_"But then Palpatine's _plan_ for me was that I get assigned to Tarkin is his little _protégé_, or someone to _take under his wing._ He, as well as Ma— the Sixth Sister, serve as. . . watchers, essentially. And I _could_ give them the slip, but—and I know what you're thinking Leia, and she has nothing to do with it—"_

Leia snorted.

Ahsoka gave her a curious look.

Leia said, "Later."

_"—but then I found out,"_ Luke folded his hands in front of him and sighed, _"that Tarkin has been given control of the Death Star. And as his aide. . ."_

Leia, for all that she'd seen this before, closed her eyes. "No, Luke, no no no. . ."

_". . .I can get to the plans," _he finished. _"And if I can get to the plans—or, hell, if I can talk to Galen Erso, find out if there's any weaknesses, and then I can try to contact you again and tell you, so you can _destroy it. _Because it needs to be destroyed._

_"I know you have no reason to trust me, so I'll add this as proof, and because I'm _terrified_ for you: Thrawn is still hunting Amidala. And he's narrowed down your location to the Raioballo sector. He was on Coruscant recently asking Palpatine for permission and funds for a large scale assault; if you're anywhere near that sector, I advise that you _get out, and get out now_."_

He was trembling, Leia noticed. Shaking from head to toe.

She tried not to think about the fact that it had been on _Luke's_ recommendation that Palpatine set Thrawn on the case.

_"I'm sorry I can't come in person," _he whispered. _"Leia—I'm so, so sorry. I want to see you again, I miss you, and I want to join you right now, wherever you are. But if I can do this, I _have_ to—and you know it too. What this monstrosity is capable of. . ."_

He shuddered again and shook his head.

_"I love you," _he reiterated. He blinked suddenly and tears scoured his face; he tried to wipe them away subtly, then gave up and let them fall._ "I miss you,_ so much_. I— I'll see you soon, I promise, after I succeed in this." _He smiled._ "I promise._

_"Now, I'm gonna leave this somewhere on Cymoon for you to find, because Tarkin received intelligence that you would be there and is going there to shore up its defences again the attack, and I promise you I'll do my best to sabotage them. I— yeah." _He shrugged._ "I promise._

_"I'll see you—"_

Luke jerked as there was a _rattatat _on the door, harsh and blunt and loud, and an Outer Rim-accented voice shouted in:

_"Kid! That grumpy old governor guy wants to see you in his office before we arrive. Some sorta briefing."_

Luke's shoulders sagged, and he tried to smile at the holoprojector. He tried.

_"I'll be out in a second,"_ he called back to whoever that was, then looked at the holoprojector and mouthed _I love you_.

The image flickered out.

Padmé released a deep breath she'd kept pent up inside her, bending over double, hand braced on the table.

"So much like his father," she murmured. Leia didn't think she was supposed to hear that.

Ahsoka stepped forwards, concerned. "What he said, about Thrawn—"

"We'll start evacuations," Padmé said. "This was only ever a small base anyway."

She was still staring at the spot where Luke's image had disappeared.

* * *

The guards on her cell had been slashed from two to one, and a lazy one at that, so Aphra pricked her ears up and paid attention. This cell was underground on whatever planet the Rebels had made this particular base on—the earth that stained the walls through the corners of her underground hideout was a reddish-brown, but that didn't tell her _anything_—and she could hear heavy thumping in the levels above.

What were they _doing_, a freeform Sullustan dance routine? What the hell was important enough that they diverted so many resources to it, so frantically—judging by the speed of the thumping (provided this base was mainly staffed by humanoids and not quadrupeds)—that a dangerous prisoner was only guarded by one man?

And a weedy man, she thought, from what she'd seen of him through the teeny tiny flap in the door. She could take him. If she wasn't wearing shock cuffs. If she wasn't trapped behind a metal door.

Never mind.

Did they just think she wasn't a significant threat? (If so, rude.)

Or. . .?

She grinned.

Were they _evacuating_?

Did they think her—and her _employment_ by _certain Imperials_—was too much of a risk, so they were packing up their base and skedaddling before an angry, asthmatic Sith Lord descended upon them? Did they think he had a tracker on her, or that she'd escape and alert him to their location nonetheless?

She liked that explanation a lot better, as egoistic and unrealistic as it was. But the explanation itself was of no consequence.

What was of consequence was that she _did_ have far fewer guards now, and that everyone on base _was_ distracted.

* * *

Really. Two hours should _not_ be enough time for someone to bust their way out of a cell. These Rebels were soft.

But, she _had_ noted as she sprinted through the base (ducking and weaving to avoid the shouts and shots; she was damn lucky that the demon princess herself hadn't turned up to throttle her), that it was a pretty small one, as far as military bases went. Maybe it was a stopover. Maybe it was an outpost. Who knew.

What mattered was—

She skidded to a halt in front of the open door to a hangar and grinned.

The chaotic stripes and shapes of the _Ark Angel_—like the product of a youngling's geometry lesson, she thought affectionately—gleamed under the white sunlight.

White sunlight. Alright, that narrowed down the options for where she could be.

She locked the hangar door behind her and shot the controls before someone could blast them open or something, then took off up the ramp. That ragtag bunch of Rebels must have decided to bring her ship back for whatever reason.

Good on them.

She nearly slipped over when she first got inside, fast as she was going, and scowled fiercely down at the floor. _Sand_.

There had been no sand on Cymoon!

_Where_ had whoever had flown her ship—the space sorceress, probably—_taken it_?

A noise of disgust blasted out of her throat but she ignored it and just forged onwards. She needed to get _out_—

She blasted out of the base, evading the turbolasers. Only once did she glance down at the planet below and recognise it.

_Dantooine. Huh._

It was a good place for a Rebel base, she supposed. But not for much longer.

Soon, Vader would know.

She pulled back the lever and leapt to hyperspace.

Only _then_ did she go to check on what, exactly, had been done to her ship in the meantime. If they'd put a tracker on it for whatever reason, she could disable it; if they'd left any nasty surprises in the engineering, she could disable those too. . .

The ship had been used by two people—humans, she'd guess—and a droid. They hadn't really messed with anything, though she _was_ annoyed to find out that that demon twin had wiped the navicomputer of where she'd jumped.

_And_ wiped the backup navicomputer. That girl was good.

If she was desperate, Aphra supposed she could analyse the sand particles left on the ship, but she wasn't _that_ desperate. She didn't need to know where they'd been; she just needed to let Vader know where they were _now_, before they finished their evacuation.

So she finished her diagnostics check on everything in the ship, satisfied. . . except for one thing.

The holoprojector on her console had been used.

It was barely noticeable—just the fact that the Imperial datachip slot which Aphra hardly ever had cause to use was looking a little shinier than usual—but it was there. And after a quick check, she couldn't find a log of any incoming or outgoing transmissions (wiped or otherwise) anyway, so she _knew_ it had to have been a chip.

The chip was no longer in there.

But. . .

She frowned. With _this_ particular machine, she knew a certain trick that. . .

A hologram flashed to life.

The ship, reconstructing the data from whatever it had downloaded.

The image stuttered and cut out, a voice and face constantly flickering, but it was enough to intrigue Aphra.

Because that was Luke Vader—the slightly more tolerable demon twin, but only slightly—in the holo.

It could be perfectly innocent. She was sure that the girl would have every interest in hanging onto things from her brother, in protecting her own, even if the brother wasn't complicit in it.

But Aphra watched as much of it as she could construct. It wasn't much—the machine was malfunctioning; karking _sand_—but it was enough.

It was _suspicious_.

Vader might kill her for failing to kidnap her quarry, but between the location of the latest Rebel base, as well as of his daughter, _and_ the news that his son was absolutely a traitor as well. . .

. . .this was something she thought he'd want to hear.


	44. Blue Light, and White

Consciousness resurfaced in brief flashes—white ones, rather than the purple flashes he'd blacked out to. He wasn't sure if the excruciating. . . _feeling _ in his cells as they tore themselves apart and stitched themselves back together was a holdover from the injuries or because Palpatine had dragged him back to the waking world just to punish him again, but _burning _was an insignificant word to describe it. It felt like a screech tasted, like a tiny klaxon in each and every nucleus of every cell of all his tissues screaming in one overwhelming cacophony.

He groaned.

When he finally prised his eyelids open it was to the sharp light of the medbay on the _Sovereign II_. The beams of the lamp were like Ahsoka had taken her lightsabers to his eyes and blinded him—at least until a large, head-shaped shadow gave him some respite.

His vision blurred, eyes watery and hazed, but after a moment of fierce blinking and shallow breathing, he recognised Han's rugged face.

He also recognised Han prodding him.

"Hey!" he snapped. Or tried to snap. He croaked it, more like. "That—"

"Hurts, Solo, and his pain is giving me a headache," Mara said. _She_, unlike him, actually managed to snap. "Stop it."

Han retracted his hand. "You awake?"

Even the sound of his voice, quiet as it was, sent agony washing through the tender tissue of his brain. "Unfortunately," he rasped. "What—"

"We're on the _Sovereign II_; we've left Coruscant."

"I got _that_," Luke muttered, trying his best to sit up—then Mara put a gentle but firm hand out and pushed him back down again.

"You're injured. If you want to recover quickly, stay still and let your body heal itself," she ordered.

Then she smiled, and it almost wasn't vicious. "Unless you want me to beat you in a practise duel again."

Luke snorted, and tried to sit up despite her words. "What do you mean _again_?"

"_Be still_, Skywalker."

Luke lay still. "Where're we going?"

"What?"

He glanced between them. "You said we're on the _Sovereign II_. You said we're not on Coruscant. And I can sense we're in hyperspace. So—where're we going?"

"I thought you already knew everything."

He smiled. "Remind me."

Han shrugged. "Eadu," he said. "Whatever's there, I dunno that name." Neither did Luke—though it did sound vaguely familiar, some facility or something—

"In light of Tarkin's failure at Cymoon," Mara cut in—Luke and Han exchanged a look at the mention of _that_—"our master is sending him to check over some of his other, most important projects, to ensure that their security has not been compromised. This is his last chance; Cymoon was a significant blow.

"Eadu, I believe, is the location of Galen Erso's facility."

Luke's eyes blew wide. Mara nodded grimly. "Indeed."

Han glanced between them. "Huh?"

Neither moved to explain it.

But. . .

_Eadu._

_Galen Erso_.

The _main developer of the Death Star_, the man who understood it above all else—

—_the man who'd always seemed to loathe the Empire—_

—the man who could tell Luke _everything_ he needed to know about it.

This was his chance!

He could find a weakness, right from the creator; he could find a weakness, find how to destroy it, then somehow give Mara and all of Tarkin's forces the slip and escape back to the Rebellion. . .

This was his chance.

Luke fought to keep the smile off his face, lest Mara get suspicious. But when he lay down again, he wept into his pillow, and it was not because of the pain.

* * *

There were rivulets of liquid dripping onto her, mapping out a complex study of her head, arms and torso, violet, but caught and dazzled the light like quicksilver, blue-white ropes of fire snaking around her and _constricting, scorching_—

Leia sat up with a scream.

The early hours of the morning were cold and quiet. It only made the thunder of her panicked breaths louder in her ears, made the sudden, vast absence of pain chilly in a foreboding way.

Nightmares, again.

She'd thought they'd finished.

She hadn't _stopped_ the nightmares, of course, but she'd _slept through them_ before, they'd been borne of petty fears and disjointed uncertainties and the vague addling of the unconscious mind. But _this_. . .

She knew the difference between dreams and reality.

_This was the latter._

And, knowing what she did now. . .

The nightmares had stopped after their final, failed rescue attempt. They'd stopped after Luke had pretended to start working with Palpatine again, after he'd stopped being actively tortured, so the fact that they'd started again. . .

_Had Luke been found out?_

The mere _thought_ of it crushed all breath from her lungs; she threw herself to the floor of her little bunk room, on her hands and knees, and bent over double, heavy great breaths—

_Had he been discovered?_

_Had Palpatine—_

A light, peaceful touch on her mind.

Master. Yoda. He was awake—or she'd woken him, with her sudden eruption of turmoil—and wanted to speak to her.

She threw on some more substantial clothes, clipped her new lightsaber to her belt, and jogged out to meet him, whether it was four am or not.

She was never going to get back to sleep after _that_.

* * *

He was in the empty hangar bay they always used for lessons, meditating; Leia had to wonder if constantly sitting on the floor ever got uncomfortable.

He tilted his head when she sat down cross-legged in front of him, doing her best impression of _demure_ and _dutiful_, and it was one of those few moments she had when it struck her how _old_ he was.

"Well?" he hmphed. "A trouble, have you?"

She rested her palms on her knees and bowed her head. "A nightmare."

He hummed. "Much chaos, there is, for now. Evacuating, we are? That archaeologist—escaped, has she."

"I know. We're _dealing with it_—we're leaving anyway." Her voice broke off. "But things were chaotic _before_. And for a bit, I stopped having nightmares anyway."

"Nightmares. . ." he murmured, and she wondered what he was remembering. "About what?"

Despite herself, her flat palms clenched into fists. "Lightning. Getting electrocuted, _fried_, by Palpatine and his kriffing _Force lightning_—"

"Who is? Yourself? Or someone else?"

"Someone else."

"Someone close to you."

Leia swallowed. "I'm convinced that it's Luke."

He didn't respond to that, for some reason—just gave another little _hmph_.

"Premonitions?" he asked, voice oddly wry. She wasn't sure; his voice sometimes seemed to be _wryness incarnate_, on occasion.

"I don't think so—it's. . . entirely possible, that it's just something happening right now to my brother, parsecs and parsecs away, that I'm sensing."

"Possible? Indeed. These. . . visions," he mused, "what to do with them, you wish to know?"

"_Yes_. I— I can't _do_ anything to help Luke, no matter how much I _want to_"—her nails buried themselves harshly in the soft heels of her hands—"so I need to _block it out_."

She added sadly, "So I don't lose faith."

"Hmm. Faith. In what?"

She looked at him. "In Luke. That he can succeed in his mission—the mission he _set himself_, to find out how to destroy the Death Star, to no doubt do something _stupidly heroic_, that I'll _see him again_—"

"Careful you must be of the fear of loss, Leia," he told her. "A path, it is, back to the dark side."

"I _know_!" She buried her face in her hands. "But I don't know what to _do_! I— I'm so _afraid_ for him, what if he gets _caught_, what if he _dies_—"

"Death is a natural part of life," he informed her. "Rejoice, you must, for those around you who transform into the Force. Mourn them do not, miss them do not."

She shook her head. "I can't do that."

"Neither could your father, when your age, was he," Yoda admitted. Her skin crawled at the comparison. "Or, older, perhaps—look the same to old eyes, the young do. But let go of his fear of losing his wife, Anakin could not. Now here we stand."

"I am not about to commit _genocide_," Leia said through gritted teeth. She threw herself to her feet and paced. "But I _cannot_ sit back and allow my brother to be _killed_ on this _ridiculous errand_ he's set himself!"

He sighed.

She whirled on him. "What do you _think_ I should do? Leave him to die?"

"If you honour what he fights for," he told her, "yes."

The words hit her like a punch to the gut.

"Lost, your brother is. Learn to let go, you must, and allow him to do what little he can."

Leia froze at that.

Turned to him, deadly slowly.

"What do you mean," she whispered, "_lost_?"

Yoda's gaze didn't waver from hers—he had the nerve to look her in the eye. That somehow made it so much worse.

"In the heart of the Sith, he is," he said baldly. "Never return, can he—not alive, and not light. Never renounce the darkness, will he be able to, and so he must die, so the light can thrive."

"My _brother_," she spat, "is lighter than I will _ever be_. He is better, kinder, has more faith, more trusting, more _trustworthy_—"

"And seen him, you have not, since the Sith sank their claws in, no? Lost, he is. Risk you, and the future of the Order, I will not."

Leia spun on her foot, lightsaber leaping from floor to hand to lit as she whirled, and carved a slash in midair as she levelled it at Yoda's wrinkled throat.

"_I am not a Jedi!_"

He didn't flinch at the blade, a perfect purple, bright and humming, that waggled in his face.

"I agreed to learn the _light_," Leia panted fiercely, "not your dogmatic ways. I _will not_ abandon my brother."

"If he survives, because he turned back to the Sith, it will be, so kill him, someone must—"

"_No one has to_!"

"—and preferably, must it be—"

"_No_." She backed off, staring at her teacher with wide, horrified eyes. "What— I will _not_. _No_."

"You must."

"You're wrong," she breathed. "You're wrong about the future and you're _wrong about my brother_." She breathed in deeply; tears wetted her face like summer rain. "He will succeed. He'll come back to the light, no matter what you, or Palpatine, or any other old, tired men who've messed up this _entire kriffing galaxy_ have to say about it. _I have faith in him_."

And that, she realised belatedly, was exactly what she'd come in here for.

"Naive and foolish, you are," Yoda said sadly. "Thought like you do, Obi-Wan did, but tell him that young Skywalker must not be told of you, or the Rebellion, lest he use it against you, I did. Regret it, I do not."

"_Obi-Wan_?" Leia breathed.

Yoda said nothing.

Leia took a step towards him. "Obi-Wan Kenobi," she said, "_Old Ben_. . . is dead. Has been for eleven years."

But she remembered the ghost on Jedha, the voice that had whispered to her. . .

Before Yoda could say anything else, she turned on her heel and stormed out.

* * *

Eadu was a rain-lashed, windswept planet, and Luke was drenched from the moment he stepped out of the shuttle. He shivered in the cold, but made sure to keep his back straight, and when Tarkin looked back at him—_glared_ back at him—he could find nothing off about his composure.

Thank the Force they advanced to the facility quickly, though—it was _cold_.

The Eadu research facility was all grey lines and harsh lights—Imperial architecture in a nutshell, but this time against the backdrop of craggy mountains and knifing rain, flashing like mercury. Luke grimaced looking round it.

There was a small entourage in the main foyer to meet Tarkin, headed by a man in white. Luke flattened his lips to keep them from twitching into a smile; he recognised _that_ man.

"Governor Tarkin, you honour us with your visit," Krennic said. He barely managed to mask the dislike in his voice.

Tarkin parried: "Well, you've done such excellent work here, Director Krennic, it would be remiss of me not to ensure that it continues. . ."

Luke let his attention wander as they exchanged barbs, finally landing on the row of scientists behind Krennic. The man who stood closest to Krennic, wearing a dark suit, _exuded_ discomfort. His gaze landed on Luke, widened in recognition, then sliced away fast enough for Luke to work out that this was _not_ a skilled deceiver.

Galen Erso.

He remembered _him_.

The head scientist of the Death Star project, father to a known insurrectionist. . . and, from what Luke could tell, no fan of the Empire himself.

Once upon a time, Luke may have wondered why he worked for the Empire at all, then, but he was no longer so naive. And by all accounts, the Empire wanted him because he was a genius.

Luke understood why Palpatine had forced him to work on this project.

But he _did_ know that it meant Erso—capable of genius the rest of the Empire had no hope of replicating—had _every interest_ in sabotaging the death-machine he was pushed so hard to build.

If anyone was going to tell Luke what that thing's weaknesses were, he decided, narrowing his eyes a fraction, it was _him_.

* * *

They were led into a receiving room, where drinks were offered around and officers were expected to mingle and. . . _chat_. Krennic was obviously trying to make a good impression on Tarkin, rivals though they were, or at least try to imitate the very heights of Imperial hospitality. Erso's scientists all looked stiff and ill at ease in their crisp suits and high-end company, but Luke had to admire how well they were composing themselves regardless.

He wandered over to the window over a gap in the mountains, where Erso stood, and offered him a flute of wine. He'd barely touched his own yet—as little an effect it had on him, it still wasn't worth the risk of poisoning or intoxication—but he took a sip now, to signal that it was safe.

Erso, highly reluctant, took it.

"Galen Erso, right?" Luke said after a moment of staring at the bright lights beyond the window, the gushing rain. "We met at Kuat."

Erso was watching him a little too intently. "We did," he confirmed, and only then did he take a sip, barely letting the liquid touch his lips before he lowered his glass again.

Luke hadn't drugged it, or even offered the glass with the thought that alcohol might make extracting the information easier. But it _was_ a good indicator of how much Erso felt he could trust him.

Lightning flashed beyond the window.

"Beautiful weather here," Luke drawled, and Erso chuckled to himself hesitantly, despite the tension. Luke let himself smile. "Of all the planets I've lived on, I can't say I'm that used to rain."

Erso glanced sideways at him. He was a scientist: curiosity was one of his defining traits, and even he could see how strange it was that someone of Luke's age was this high up in the Imperial aristocracy. So it was only half-politeness that had him asking, "Where have you lived then?"

"Well I lived on Tatooine for a few years," Luke said humorously. Erso laughed again at that, still stilted.

Luke could feel his bodyguards' gazes on his back, but he'd asked them to hang back for a reason. If Mara got suspicious, so be it.

"That is. . . quite the difference," Erso admitted.

"Then I moved to a lava planet."

Another chuckle; still forced, but less so. "It's not getting much better."

"Well, then I moved to Coruscant," Luke admitted. "So I _have_ seen rain, but—"

"It's not real rain there," Erso told him, "believe me. I'm from Grange, but I've lived on Coruscant before; their meteorological controlled rain is _nothing_ like the natural kind."

"How does it even work?" Luke asked. To an extent he _was_ genuinely curious, and he let that shine through in his voice—no one had ever explained it to him, and when he was younger he used to think the meteorological department must have it out for him, always scheduling rain on days he wanted to be cheered up, before he'd grown up and realised he wasn't the centre of the universe—but. . . he also just wanted to get Erso talking. "I know about how weather is caused, of course, but how do they manipulate it artificially? What sort of a water waste is it?"

Erso hesitated. Luke could sense, without diving too deep into his mind, that he was warming to Luke, but still didn't trust _anyone_ wearing an Imperial uniform.

The soft pink of his emotions though. . . Luke's childish chatter reminded him of something, _someone_, dear; someone familial, who he cared about more than anything and missed fiercely. . .

Knowing what Luke knew about him, it was not hard to guess who that person was.

Luke pushed further: "Do they control the _whole planet_? I heard somewhere that there were ethical discrepancies between which areas got the dangerous storms, if the rich—"

"It works," Erso said hurriedly—_cutting him off before he implicated them both in potentially treasonous words_—"like this."

And as he explained it, as Luke asked more questions and Erso fell into the rhythm of explaining something he found interesting, his shoulders ever so slightly loosened.

* * *

Wow. The boss's new ship—the _Executioner_? Whatever it was called—was _big_.

Aphra tried to get her gawking mouth closed and her clearance codes transmitted, before that tetchy captain sniping at her over the comms blew a fuse (and her ship)—_hells_ he needed to relax a tiny bit—and guided her ship into the hangar she'd been ordered to.

She'd barely touched down when she glanced out of the viewport and flinched—there was a tall, dark, fuming Sith Lord already standing in the doorway to the hangar and _he did not look pleased_.

She swallowed, and made sure the holo she'd reconstructed from what the brat had left behind was ready to play on her small, handheld holoprojector.

Then she went out to greet him.

"Boss!" she said. She wiped her palms on her trousers—little Leia had even raided her wardrobe and left it a _mess_—and kept the projector tucked under her arm. "You'll never believe—"

Her words were suddenly, _violently_ cut off as she was tossed into the air, and intense pressure around her throat.

The projector clattered to the floor.

* * *

"Ahsoka!"

Leia barged into her office without asking permission to pass, heart still hammering in her neck, and Ahsoka barely had the chance to put down the datapad she'd been reading before she barrelled on: "Did you know about Ben Kenobi?"

"What?" Ahsoka asked, but there was something in her voice—

Leia straightened herself to her full (diminutive) height and folded her arms together. Ahsoka's office was a poky little room at the back of the base, with no windows but well-lit from various datapads and screens, and she felt like if she could only summon enough attitude, she would fill the space to bursting.

"When I was on Jedha, building my lightsaber," Leia said. "The temple wouldn't let me in at first. It was for two people: the master and the apprentice."

Ahsoka's frown was more a pinch of the mouth. "I'm aware of that type of temple," she said. "Kanan, Ezra and I visited one on Lothal to try to contact Master Yoda. That was when we were told to go to. . ."

Leia, intrigued despite her single-mindedness, asked, "Go where?"

That pinched frown became a pinched smile. "Malachor."

_Ah_.

Where Kanan had been blinded. Where her father had sworn to kill Ahsoka, and nearly succeeded.

"Alright," she said, swallowing. "Anyway, it wouldn't let me in on my own. And the only reason I got in was because someone showed up to help me."

"I see." If Ahsoka saw where she was going with this, she didn't let on. "A local?"

"No. A ghost."

Ahsoka let out a breath.

Closed her eyes.

"You saw Obi-Wan's ghost too?"

"_So_," Leia pressed, "you _have_ seen him?"

"He turned up one night, a few weeks ago. It was the middle of the night, I _had_ been fast asleep; I assumed I'd just been dreaming, and I was extremely confused about it, until. . ."

"Until?"

She sighed. "Until we watched Luke's message. Obi-Wan contacted me to let me know that Luke had spoken to him, was planning on playing his game and winning. He said he would've told you, but Master Yoda thought the news would distract you from training—thought that—"

"Luke was a lost cause," Leia finished viciously. "I know."

"Uh huh. I could feel your argument from _here_." Ahsoka grimaced. "When I woke up again, the memory was fuzzy—there was a good chance it was just a dream, I've had dreams about lost comrades returning before. . ."

Leia decided not to ask. Ahsoka cleared her throat.

"I was in doubt," she said softly. "I didn't want to tell you or your mother—I suspected that it might well be true, knowing Luke, but I didn't want to get your hopes up. I figured if it was true, Obi-Wan would show up again—and I don't know how this manifestation thing works, but he never did. And then I figured that I'd know for sure when Luke told us himself." She smiled faintly. "And then he did."

Leia's mind was whirring, but— "You should've told me."

"And risk upsetting you again? You'd only just settled down, begun to accept Yoda's teachings. Your nightmares had only just calmed." She softened her voice. "How many have you had just since seeing Luke's message?"

Leia chose not to comment.

"I didn't want to risk it. Not on a false hope."

Trying to ignore the tightness in her chest, Leia nodded. "Thank you," she croaked. "Thank you for looking out for me, _after me_, as well as you do. I don't deserve it."

Ahsoka's face gentled, and she rose from her seat to come and take Leia's hands. She carefully unfurled them from their fists, plucking the nails from their beds in her palms one by one, then wrapped her arms around her.

Leia leaned into her chest and tried not to sob.

"Of course you do, Leia," Ahsoka murmured. "I know none of this has been easy for you, but you're still trying so hard. We're all so proud of you."

Tears leaked from the corners of Leia's eyes. She drew back, using her thumb to wipe them away.

"Thank you," she reiterated. "Now, I—"

"Meditate with me," Ahsoka said. "C'mon—let's try and reach Obi-Wan, and have him explain everything to us. And," she hesitated. "Try not to think too harshly of Master Yoda. I love him dearly, but I left the Jedi because they had severe problems in their approaches to problems, and he is a product and perpetuator of those problems."

She said quietly, "We just need to show him _other_ ways of doing things. He's old, not incorrigible; he'll change his mind when confronted with facts."

Leia nodded. When Ahsoka wrapped an arm around her waist and led her out to find a place to meditate, she leaned into her touch.

* * *

They meditated, and when they reached Obi-Wan Kenobi, he explained everything.

* * *

"_What_ do you have for me," Vader hissed, "that is not _failure_?"

Her face was purpling now, but he did not feel inclined to lessen his grip—the last he'd seen of his son, he was half-dead and in agony; when he'd seen her _message_ he had allowed hope to spring that his daughter would be returned to him, that they could find a way to save Luke and extract him from the tangled web Palpatine had woven _together_—

But when her ship had dropped out of hyperspace, he had not sensed his daughter.

He had sensed only _her_, and the sort of nervousness that came from _complete, and utter, failure_.

She tried to gasp something out through his stranglehold. "Ho. . . lo. . ."

He just tightened it further.

He should close his hand completely, here and now; he should crush her skull and snap her spine and end her miserable excuse for an existence, the way he _longed_ to do to Palpatine, _she had failed him_—

"About. . . Luke. . ."

It was _that name_ that snapped him out of it.

He dumped her to the floor.

"_What_ did you say?"

It took several seconds before she was able to speak, but she dared not wait any longer—she knew full well that his patience was not infinite.

"I do not have your daughter, my lord," she croaked, still massaging her bruising neck. "But I have two other things of interest."

She swallowed, grimaced when it hurt, and he restrained the urge to tap his foot.

He was a Sith Lord. Sith Lords did not _tap their feet_.

"And?" he growled.

She went on: "I tried to capture her on Cymoon One. I failed, and they captured me instead, and the girl took my ship to go. . . somewhere. I don't know; she wiped the navicomputer—"

The temperature was plummeting; his patience was shortening.

"—but! They took _me_ back to the central Rebel base. A small one, where all the administration is, and where Leia is staying."

He paused.

She said, "It's on Dantooine."

So. Grand Admiral Thrawn's investigations had been correct; that _was_ where the elusive _Amidala_ who spat on his late wife's name was hiding. He wanted to grind his teeth and grin in triumph simultaneously.

But he knew where his daughter was.

He could take a taskforce there, retrieve her himself—

"And," Aphra continued, interrupting his daydreams of power and reunification and _strength_, "because the girl used _my ship_ for some unknown purpose, I have some traces of her. There's sand everywhere; wherever she went was a desert world. A set of Rebel fatigues she left behind, spare parts that I suspect come from a lightsaber—certain parts were also taken from my ship that I think could've been used to build a lightsaber. . ."

_Leia_ had built herself a new lightsaber? _Why_? Was her Sith one not good enough?

Were— were the _Rebel Jedi _teaching her the weakness of the light?

Aphra felt the room growing colder again and finished hurriedly: "And I found a message."

His gaze snapped to hers.

"On the holoprojector in the cockpit—she clearly inserted a datachip in there to view it, and the ship downloaded some of the information. The machine was corrupted by some of the sand floating about, but I managed to reconstruct as much of the message she was viewing as possible, and it was from your son."

Had his lungs not been regulated, he would have stopped breathing. "What?"

Aphra shakily got to her feet again, and picked up to the machine that had clattered to the floor when he'd strangled her. She held it out; it was a holoprojector.

"See for yourself," she said. "Preferably in a secure place; I don't think you want this getting out."

Vader took the holoprojector gingerly.

Luke had sent Leia a message?

How? When?

What had he said?

"Leave," he ordered. "Continue to track the Rebels' movements, and take any chance you can to recapture my daughter, but do not storm the base on Dantooine; I will find people to do that myself."

She had the nerve to snort. "Trust me, I wasn't planning on it."

He glared. "_Leave_. I will send you further instructions once I have viewed whatever you have brought me."

She swallowed, nodded her head—not quite a bow, but he'd take it—and scurried up the ramp to her ship. He didn't bother sticking around to watch her go.

He took the turbolift right to his quarters, and wasted no time in striding into his hyperbaric chamber. With a hiss, it depressurised and his helmet was removed, and—finally—Vader pressed the button his thumb had been hovering above for far too long.

It was a grainy image, the surroundings unrecognisable—_his son_ unrecognisable, almost, save by the tilt of his posture, the slope of his chin and the cadence of his voice.

_"Leia,"_ he said, and Vader's heart clenched. _"Ahsoka,"_ he said, and he let out a growl. _"M— Mother—"_

Vader _roared_.

That— did he _still believe _that the terrorist touting herself as Amidala was his mother? That Padmé would _ever_ even _associate_ with the group?

He—

He was still talking.

_". . .what you must think of me, but—kghkk_—_"_ Static interrupted him, the gaps in the files. _"—message is. Telling you what I'm doing, so. . . whatever you think of me, you can think it based on the facts."_

It cleared up briefly—it cleared up, was perfect, so Vader had no reason to believe that the next part was anything but what Luke had genuinely said:

_"I did not return to the Empire._

_"I will _never_, _ever,_ return to the Empire. I promise. I just had to—khk kgkhk— I figured that spying again, as high as the risk would be, was the best way to go about it."_

Luke was a spy.

_Luke_ had lied to his master, lied to Vader, lied to Tarkin, to be a _spy_—

_". . .original plan was to get out of the cell—khk—grab as much information as I could and run at the first chance I got."_

Luke had lied. . . to escape.

Vader almost smiled.

Because it might still work. Luke was already far from Coruscant, and smart enough to give anyone the slip; if he was careful, if he didn't get too _involved_ with a certain _Inquisitor_ Palpatine had sent to keep an eye on him. . .

He watched the rest with equal growing amusement and disdain, until—

_". . .but then I found out, that Tarkin has been given control of the Death Star._

_"And as his aide, I can get to the plans."_

He was _insane_.

_"—find out if there are any weaknesses—kghgkkhk— Because it needs to be destroyed."_

His son was _insane_. He was going to get himself _killed_, Tarkin—

Vader paused.

Tarkin was headed to Eadu.

Galen Erso's facility. If there was a weakness, Luke would find it there, and he _could_ find a way to destroy it.

Vader didn't know how he felt about that.

There was more—a vague, interrupted warning about an imminent attack, heartfelt apologies, and then—

_"I love you."_

Vader jerked back in his chair at that—at the tenderness, the desperation in it.

More useless details—

And then Luke turned to the holocam and mouthed _I love you_, again.

The holo ended. Vader sat in silence—in shock.

He should take this to his emperor. He should confront Luke.

But if he did that, his son would die.

_I will not have a Rebel son._

_Then you will have a dead one._

The regular rasp of his respirator was the only sound to be heard.

_I will not have a Rebel son._

_Then you will have a dead one._

With hands that would have shaken, had they been flesh and bone, Vader replayed the holo. But only one part—the end.

Luke mouthed _I love you_ at the viewer.

Vader watched it again.

And again.

And again.

But not once did he succeed in convincing himself that the platitude was aimed at him.


	45. Eighth Shadow

The introductory. . . _gala_. . . only lasted an hour or so. After that, they were due for a tour.

Luke joined up with Mara and Han after he drifted away from Erso. Han jabbed him in the back. "What was _that_ about?"

Luke ignored him.

"Seriously, Skywalker," Mara hissed, "you can't just _tell us not to come near you_."

"Oh, Jade, I didn't realise you cared."

"You know I don't care _shavit_ if you die or not, but if this gets back to the Emperor—"

"I will take full blame for it."

"_That's exactly_—" She was cut off by Tarkin beginning. . . whatever spiel he was beginning now. Her huff of outrage was amusing; Luke laughed.

Tarkin's cold gaze snapped to his. "Luke?"

He stiffened. His breathing suddenly came quick.

Everyone was looking at him.

Tarkin strode forwards; the crowd parted for him like a sea breaking around a rock.

"Is something," he asked, coldly and clearly, "amusing?"

He'd been angry at Luke since Coruscant. Since _Cymoon_.

He was suspicious.

Luke hadn't been responsible for the failure at Cymoon. But Tarkin didn't know that.

And Tarkin being suspicious would be a _severe problem anyway_.

"No, sir," Luke said.

Tarkin stalked ever closer, and Luke's automatically backed away, until he bumped into some of the troopers escorting them.

He stopped right in front of him, so close Luke felt cramped; he towered over Luke enough that his neck twinged, trying to keep their gazes locked. After a heartbeat, Luke realised that _maybe_ it would've shown more deference to lower his eyes, but Luke was not _deferent_.

He never had been—no, he _had_ been in the cell, at the end, but only so he could get out, that was _calculated,_ that _wasn't_ _him_—

"The respect you show leaves much to be desired," Tarkin informed him. "And now you are embarrassing yourself"—_and me_, went the unspoken implication—"in one of the most important scientific research bases in the Empire."

Luke swallowed, and said nothing. He didn't care what Tarkin did to him; he didn't care about any of the people here.

"I would've expected such behaviour from your father," Tarkin continued; Luke tried not to clench his fists, "but even he would be disgusted to see what his son has become, I feel."

"I don't care what my father thinks anymore." Luke could taste the lie on his tongue.

Tarkin ignored him. "Even your sister, traitor though she was, knew how to pretend to be courteous."

Luke still said nothing.

He was a bully. He was trying to get a rise out of him. He was trying to exert power over him, belittle them, the way he _always had_, because he was insecure about his place in the Empire in comparison to them and he hated that they would always be greater—no; _better_—than he, and—

Luke could keep his silence.

But then Tarkin ordered, "Do up your shirt collar and at least _try_ to look presentable."

And Luke froze.

"Move ahead, Krennic," Tarkin said, "I will meet you at the entrance to the laboratories."

Luke was distantly aware of people moving, leaving, but he kept his gaze fixed on Tarkin's flinty eyes.

He did not reach for his collar.

"I gave you an order, boy. You are here to serve and assist me, are you not?"

Luke bit out, "I'm not here for you at all."

Quick as a striking viper, Tarkin's hand lashed up to seize the collar himself, forcing it together. Luke choked; for a moment his gaze went dark—

—he could hear high winds in his ears—

—he couldn't _breathe_—

He couldn't breathe; he _could_ scream. But he couldn't even _hear_ that scream; it vanished into the void that yawned before his eyes, the dizzying heights and fathoms that kicked underneath his feet—

And then he _fell_, lightning splintering up his arm, and he hit solid ground hard. Lightning splintered again; he called out, hoarse, but moving his face hurt and something hot dripped onto his lips, into his mouth. He tasted blood.

When he threw his eyes open, Tarkin was staggering to his feet on the other side of corridor, holding his shoulder oddly.

He glared at Luke, and that lightning splintered again.

Luke rolled onto his back, gaze catching on a flash of red, brown—Mara and Han, also caught in that. . . blast he'd thrown out—and then on the looming ivory figure right next to him.

A gloved hand forced him upright, and a stun baton was shoved into his back again—not activated, this time. Luke took it as the threat it was, but he didn't stop moving.

He _still couldn't breathe._

He crawled away from the trooper and vomited. Blood dripped from his face into the pool.

He fumbled with filthy hands to undo his collar and planted his palms on the cool floor, dragging in deep, ragged breaths. . .

"How pathetic." Tarkin glanced at the puddle of. . . _fluids_. . . Luke was half-sitting in a curled his lip. "Get him back to the _Sovereign_; I'll deal with him later, once he's _cleaned up_. Troopers," he turned on his heel to stride in the direction the others had gone, "with me."

A few minutes of cacophonous clattering, and then Luke was alone with his bodyguards.

Mara grimaced at the vomit, but made to move forwards. Han nonetheless beat her to it, and grabbed Luke's wrist before he'd even expected it, hauling him to his feet.

"C'mon now, kid. . ."

Luke nearly collapsed again, there, but there was an arm around his shoulders. He opened his mouth to speak, say _anything_, but something warm and wet dribbled out to splatter the front of his uniform.

"Alright," Han said. He sounded like he was forcing himself to be calm. "Now, let's get you back to—"

"There's a refresher with medical supplies nearby," someone said.

It took Luke a few seconds to recognise the voice—deep, worn, a Core accent that managed to not sound posh—and by then the man was on his other side, guiding him a little way down the corridor to where a grey door hissed open and the gleaming tiles of a fresher stabbed into his eyes.

Erso guided him in, Han falling back when it was clear that the three of them couldn't all push through the door at once. The fresher was small, as well; Han glanced around, saw there was little space for a third person in there, and cast Luke a querying look.

Luke nodded. It would be best if he and Mara just waited outside.

The door shut again behind him, and Luke eased himself to sit beside it, the floor and wall cool against his back. He was right next to the toilet, should he feel like retching again, but he didn't; he felt wrung out and hollow, like if someone were to tap him, he'd ring like an empty glass.

Erso turned towards him from the sink holding damp flimsi towels, and gently pressed some into Luke's hands. "Try to wipe clean your face off a bit. I'll do your front."

And he did, very carefully, with the rusty experience of someone who'd had a child once upon a time. The water wetted the fabric of his shirt; Luke could feel the cold against his chest, and he was grateful for it. It grounded him.

The winds were receding.

He slowly, ever so slowly, dabbed at his face. His nose was leaking blood—probably from the hit to the wall or the floor he'd got when the trooper had jabbed that baton into him—and he did his best to tilt his head, blot out the blood, the way he was supposed to. He wasn't sure how successful he was being.

It still dribbled onto his upper lip and around, like a child's crude drawing of a moustache. He could taste copper on his tongue.

"Thank you," he said thickly, at last. "Shouldn't you be with. . .?"

"I told them I wasn't feeling well," Erso replied, standing again to cast the dirtied towels into the bin. "My team can give the tour of the labs perfectly well without me."

Luke kept the towel over his nose and didn't look at Erso. "I'm sorry."

"Oh no." He shook his head. "Don't apologise, Skywalker. That was—"

"Tarkin was putting me in my place. I shouldn't have spoken out, I know." He was an _idiot_, he should've _known_ that was coming, he should've just taken the punishment and tried to keep his head down, idiot, idiot, idiot— "His job is to watch me. I shouldn't have been surprised when he did what the rest of that entails."

Erso's hands had stilled in the sink. The water ran pink, then clear, but he didn't twitch to move them out of it.

"Why would you need watching?" Erso said carefully. He was no politician, Luke could tell—and he could tell that _Erso_ knew that too.

He'd been burned by Imperial power play before.

He could not afford to be caught unawares again.

"My sister defected to the Rebellion." Luke snorted, and gagged on blood. Tears sprouted in his eyes; he doubted they were all from pain. "They want to make sure I'm not a traitor too."

Erso finally moved his hands: quick, direct, methodical movements, turning off the tap and drying his hands almost curtly.

"And," he asked, "are you?"

Luke paused.

When the world blurred in his eyes and liquid that certainly wasn't blood soaked his towel, he wasn't faking it.

"I—" He choked on the word, a fresh flood of tears hooked forth, "I— I miss her."

He did.

He missed her _so much_.

He crumpled inwards and then there was an awkward hand on his shoulder.

"I—" Erso swallowed. "I miss my family, too. For what it's worth. It makes it. . . difficult to work, or focus on work, or—"

Luke nodded. "Yeah."

"My wife is dead, and I don't know where my daughter is," Erso went on, "and I haven't seen either of them in over a decade, when I was taken to work here—"

Luke's hand on his stilled his rambling.

Luke gave him another look loaded with tears, but his gaze flicked to the door. A warning.

Erso nodded once, and shut his mouth. "I—" He floundered. "I miss them too. But. . . we have to go on."

Then, after a moment, "How old are you, Luke?"

"Eighteen," Luke said distantly. His birthday—the day after he'd _last_ seen Erso, in fact—seemed so far away.

Erso tried to smile. "Even younger than my daughter would be. . ."

He reached for towel tightly clenched in Luke's hands and pried it out of them to toss that in the bin as well. Then he studied Luke, as an entirety: the bruises around his eyes, the bloodstains and tearstains, the damp patch scraped across his front.

"Tarkin," he said fiercely, "is a monster."

Luke's breath caught in his throat.

So Erso was still vehement about what he believed. Not resigned, not beaten down.

Luke stretched out wavering senses, ignoring the shudder that racked his frame as he touched the Force again—still coiled, still hot, like a detonator primed to blow—and hoping that Erso put it down to what he'd just said.

There were no holocams in the fresher. (Luke would be concerned if there were.) And Mara and Han were not listening at the door; Han was pacing outside, and Mara was. . . just waiting, leaning against the wall opposite.

She responded to the brush of his presence with an eagerness that belied her (ever so faint) concern, already pushing off the wall—

_No_, he tried to project, _not yet, I'm not ready yet_.

And, after a moment of irritated hesitation, she settled back against the wall to wait.

Luke took a deep breath and croaked aloud: "He is."

Then he dared to say—still in a whisper, a whisper to himself, the weapon he chose to wield—"And they're going to put _him _in charge of— of this _planet killer_, and he's going to hurt _so many people_, and _there's nothing I can do to stop it_—"

He froze.

"_Him_," he amended. "Stop _him_."

But Erso was staring at him, now.

Staring at the abused, traumatised boy who hated Tarkin so much.

At the open, earnest and _hurt_ boy who loved his Rebel sister so much.

At the _teenage boy_, even younger than his daughter, who wanted to do something to fight back so much.

Luke could sense Erso's unease, fear, suspicion. But he could also sense his desperation, and. . . his trust.

He desperately, desperately wanted to trust someone again.

Erso said, "What if there was?"

* * *

"You two spent a lot of time in there," Han remarked as they finally got back to their quarters on the _Sovereign II_.

Luke shrugged, wound taut as a cable. "There was a lot of blood." He shuddered as he glanced down at himself, and made a beeline to his rooms—to change into something clean. "There was a lot of—"

"We get it, Skywalker," Mara said. She yanked her lightsaber to hand and tossed it in the air a few times, something that Luke would've classed as a nervous habit had it been anyone else. "Now get changed and meet back out here in ten minutes, we have another sparring session."

Luke froze.

"No," he said.

Mara frowned.

"I'm not sparring. Not today." He added hastily, "I'm sorry."

But she just shook it off—or, tried to—with a, "Suit yourself," and stalked off to train on her own.

Which was why, when Luke re-emerged from the fresher, wearing new clothes and pink-skinned from how fiercely he'd tried to scrub away the lingering sense of _filth_, he and Han were alone in their quarters.

He sat down on the sofa opposite Han and glanced down at his datapad—Tarkin and his aides had sent him piles upon piles of paperwork to deal with, probably as a punishment for his _composure_. He gave a minute sigh, and got to work.

Han, reading something of his own opposite him, tapped his foot.

Luke raised his eyebrows but barely glanced up. "Are you alright?"

"Me?" Han faked surprise. "Of course, kid—shouldn't I be asking you? You're the one who just—"

"I'm not alright, and I doubt I will be anytime soon," Luke said baldly. "I'd have thought that would be obvious, considering the circumstances under which we met. But you have been on edge—_not alright_—also _since_ we met, and I find myself curious as to why."

Han tried to bluff, "I worry about you."

And indeed, the golden hues that stained the Force around him declared truth. Yet. . .

"You're not lying—I know you're not, don't look so shocked—but you're omitting something, too."

Han gulped and accused, "I thought you said you'd taught me how to shield—to stop myself from being an open book to you sorcerers."

"I did. I can't read your thoughts—not without effort that they're not worth—" Han glowered; Luke smiled teasingly. "—but I _can_ read your emotions."

"So what's the point?"

"Other people won't be able to do that," Luke said, and smiled. The thought was a lot sadder than he'd first realised. "I just have a gift."

Han grumbled.

Luke's voice hardened, but not unkindly. "So? What other secrets are you keeping?"

"Who says I'm keeping secrets?"

"You've never been to an Imperial academy in your life—I can tell."

"Hey, I've been to an Imperial academy!"

"Sorry." Luke's lips twitched. "You've never _graduated_ from an Imperial academy in your life; you probably got kicked out early for whatever reason, or deserted. You're not nearly snooty enough for them."

Despite himself, Han barked a laugh. "If that ain't right."

"So? Care to explain how you came to be bodyguard to someone as high up as this?"

"You? High up?" Han snorted. "You're a glorified secretary, kid."

"I am," Luke conceded. "But do you have any idea who my father is? Or even who Mara and I have to answer to, every time we head back to Coruscant?"

Han said warily, "Who?"

Luke leaned back. "I'll explain everything to you if you explain everything to me."

Han huffed.

Luke's smile dropped a little. "So?"

The silence was deafening. as he waited for a reply, Luke picked through every holocam in the room; sure enough, they were positioned in such a way that they could see them, but they were image-only, and didn't get a clear enough view of their faces to read their lips.

Finally, after a pregnant pause, Han said, "I'm not a bodyguard—or even an Imperial."

"I got that," Luke drawled.

"I'm a smuggler," Han snapped. "A _pilot_."

The ferocity—the _pride_—in that last word spoke to Luke. He understood that. Flying was like breathing.

"So how did you end up on Coruscant?"

"My co-pilot," Han said, frustrated, "a Wookiee, he. . . The Empire got him, when he was visiting family on Kashyyyk. Took him as a slave and shipped him off somewhere, and the odds might not be great but I wasn't gonna leave him to his fate, so I paid an old con-artist friend of mine to get me a fake ID chip, a fake rank, and suddenly I was Captain Han Solo—not that I wasn't always _Captain Han Solo_, but now I was a soldier of the Empire, and I figured I could start trying to find him, to bust him out."

He shrugged. "I found him, too, on Kessel. I got the right mine and everything—_K76_, where they take a lot of Wookiees—but then I got put on a list for _decent work_ or something, and got whisked halfway across the galaxy because some redhead decided that this fake soldier from a posting on a spice planet would be a great bodyguard, and now," he shrugged, "here I am."

Luke nodded. "I see."

Han gave him a look. "So? We had a deal, kid; what's your story?"

"My sister and I defected," Luke said baldly, "served as spies for the Rebellion for a few months before we were uncovered. She got out. I didn't. My own father handed me over to the Emperor's mercy and I was tortured. Now I'm here, having _repented_, with Tarkin meant to keep an eye on me to check that I don't harbour any more _anti-Imperial sympathies_."

Han's face had drained of colour from Luke's first sentence; now he looked like he was barely staying upright.

"And," he asked carefully, even his lips wan, "do you?"

Luke shrugged. "Do you want to get out and save your friend?"

"Is that a yes?"

"Because I can get you out of here, if you really want; I just need one favour of you in return. Will you do it?"

Han just narrowed his eyes. "What _favour_?"

"When you escape," Luke leaned forwards, gaze intense. "When you escape—and you _will_ escape, I know just how to make it happen. . .

"You have to take one other person with you."

* * *

Mara returned soon after they'd struck their deal, face glistening with sweat. She lingered for just enough time to inform Luke that Tarkin had returned, and wanted to see him immediately, before she headed for the fresher.

Luke walked to Tarkin's office with bated breath. This. . . could go wrong.

This could go _so, so wrong_.

But it was the only plan he had.

He had to see it through.

He knocked on Tarkin's door hesitantly, then more firmly. He tried not to wince at the brisk voice that ordered him inside.

The moment he entered, Tarkin's gaze fell on his neck, but neither he nor Luke commented on the cape he wore, covering that area neatly, hiding whether or not his top button was done up.

The star systems sewn onto the fabric gave him warmth, strength, as he finally croaked out: "I. . . apologise for my behaviour, Governor Tarkin." The words tasted bitter, but sounded sweet. "It was wrong of me. I'm too used to the naive privilege and ignorance my father granted me and my sister"—he wanted to _gag_—"but that is no excuse. My sister may have taken her arrogance as an excuse to rebel; I should not follow her example."

Tarkin surveyed him for a few moments before his thin lips stretched into a smile.

"Well," he said, standing from behind his desk to tower over Luke, "I am glad that I did not have to resort to the honeyed words or empty persuasions to get you to see sense; I always thought your father was far too soft on the two of you. The Emperor put you under my responsibility, and he was clearly right to do so—I should never have doubted that the lash would be less effective than the lure."

Luke was going to _throttle him_—

"Well, if that's all, I believe my aides have already sent you the necessary tasks for today, so I suggest you don't waste my time any longer—"

"Wait, sir," Luke said, and he did not have to fake the way his voice caught in his throat. "I have. . . one other thing to tell you about."

Tarkin settled back into the chair behind his desk, already turning his attention away. "Oh?"

"It's about Galen Erso, sir."

Tarkin's hand stilled.

He said, "Go on."

Luke swallowed. "He helped me—cleaned me up after the. . . incident, got me medical supplies. And while he did, he was voicing a few. . . _anti-Imperial sentiments_, so I pushed him further—"

"Get to the point."

"He confessed to sabotaging the Death Star," Luke said in a rush. "I don't know how, or to what extent—he only said that he knew that eventually the Empire would work out how to do it without him, so he took the chance to work on it and sabotage what he could, and build in a way to destroy it."

Tarkin had gone _entirely_ still, like a nexu scenting prey.

"And— I didn't know what to say, so I kept playing along to keep him talking, but he clammed up anyway, and I thought that if Krennic hasn't already noticed that he has a traitor on his team—"

"_Krennic_," Tarkin hissed. It was the first word he'd said in minutes. "He has been unfit for his position from the moment he received it, and now his _idiocy_ may have cost us everything."

He stood again. "Thank you for bringing this to me, Luke. Galen Erso will be apprehended and brought on board here. A confession will be extracted from him, and we will return to Coruscant at once to demonstrate to the Emperor the far reaching consequences of Krennic's inadequacy."

Luke said, "I'm glad to have been of help, sir," and prayed he hadn't just made a _horrible_ mistake.

* * *

Tarkin worked fast. It wasn't long before Luke, monitoring the Force and also the newsfeed on his datapad in equal measure, became aware of a bloodied and dismayed man being brought on board. He was escorted down to the detention cells immediately; it was only shortly after that Luke and Han—Mara being away temporarily to report to the Emperor on Luke's _compliance_, no doubt—received Tarkin's summons to go down there themselves.

To gloat.

Luke found it distasteful, but he knew what he had to do.

It was funny what doors could be opened when your procession was headed by Grand Moff Tarkin himself: upon entry to the detention level, none of them were counted, or questioned, or asked to remove their weapons. Luke had every intention of using this to his full advantage.

He kept a grip on the minds of Tarkin's escort—just enough to daze them—and noticed that Krennic was suspiciously absent. He let himself smile: so. Tarkin was spiteful enough for this sort of petty power play. Luke would make sure to at least _try_ to use that, later.

Erso's face when Tarkin stepped into his cell, arrogant and snooty and smug, closely followed by Luke, was heartbreaking. Luke desperately tried not to meet his gaze—doing what he wanted to do most, saying _it'll be alright_, would give him away faster than Tarkin could scream _Rebel_, but he wouldn't be able to look Erso in the eye without giving him _some _sort of reassurance.

So he looked at the wall instead.

If Tarkin noticed, he would make his displeasure known later; he was focused on savouring the moment.

"Galen Erso." He smirked. "Do you recall how hard Krennic fought to get you on the team, nearly twenty years ago? He was _insistent_ that no one could construct the Death Star without you."

"He was right," Erso tried to shoot back, but his voice wavered.

Tarkin tutted. "That's not what you told my young protégé here—you _made_ yourself indispensable; you were not already so."

Erso's gaze moved to Luke, and stayed there. Luke did not meet it.

"Tell me about what it was like to work under Krennic," Tarkin coaxed. "Tell me more about how much you got away with, how much treason festered in your project, and I may be able to grant you mercy."

"I may be a poor liar, Grand Moff," Erso said. His voice was already hoarse. "But I am no longer the naive man I was, living on Coruscant twenty years ago, and I know a good liar when I see one."

Tarkin smacked him.

The _whack_ resounded in the cell; it was hard enough that Luke almost heard the crack as Erso's head snapped to the side, cheek already reddening.

"I hope, for your sake," Tarkin said pleasantly, "you will be more cooperative when I return." He straightened. "Luke. Come."

Luke followed him out of the cell. When they congregated in the hallway, Luke cast a glance around and saw no Han: good. Good. He was doing his part, then.

Luke just hoped he hadn't sent his friend to his death.

Tarkin, drunk on his own success and chances for self-advancement, didn't notice; the guards, gripped in Luke's Force-fuelled stupor, certainly didn't. But when they passed a hatch in the corridor, Luke sensed a grim, strained presence hanging between it.

Good.

Now, he just needed to hack a console and get into a position to help Han with the next phase.

* * *

Trash compactors stank and his arms were on fire.

Han heard the kid and the others pass by the hatch and leashed his grunt until they were long gone, hauling himself up by the very tips of his fingers. He kicked the hatch open, _quietly_, and clambered out, glancing down the corridor to the control room. None of the officers standing around there, chattering about something inane, heard a thing.

He left the hatch open behind him and crept down to the right cell. Which was it, which was it, which was it. . .

Cell. . . 6317? Was that right?

He hoped it was right.

He took a deep breath, and hit the button to release the door.

The moment it opened, a middle-aged man with a forlorn expression looked back at him. _Bingo_.

"Are you Galen Erso?" he hissed.

The man blinked at him, confusion eclipsing forlornness.

Han gritted his teeth, leaning in a little, "C'mon, it ain't a hard question—_are you Galen Erso_?"

Eventually, the man—with narrowed eyes—nodded. "Yes."

Han grinned, a little aggressively. "Then _come with me_. I'm busting you out."

"Is this some trick of Tarkin's?" Erso asked stubbornly. "Are you going to—"

"Oh, for the love of—" Han stalked forwards, careful not to let the door close behind him, and seized Erso's arm. "A friend of mine _really_ wants you out, I'm getting rewarded to do it, so either come with me and escape or rot here; I escape either way."

Erso was suffering from a bad case of suspicion, but it wasn't the sharp or intelligent kind; as smart as the guy was, he looked _really_ shaken.

Han supposed that after this trick the kid had pulled on him, he wasn't about to turn around and trust the next cute little face that seemed earnest.

Han flung his arms up. "I'm going, then, you can stay or—"

"Wait!" Erso scrambled after him.

"_Keep your voice down_," Han said, throwing a glance towards the control room as they entered the corridor. "Now, follow me."

He strode down the corridor, gaze tracking each garbage chute—first on the left, second on the left, third on the left—

"There you go," Han said, stopping to crouch over it and loosen the hatch. "This'll get us there."

"Get us _where_?" Erso asked.

Han grinned. "To the trash compactor nearest to our escape route, of course. Get in."

Erso hesitated—_again_; did this guy not realise they were _escaping an Imperial warship?_—then climbed into the chute and slid down. Han heard the faintest, "Ew," as he hit the bottom, then Han swung down after him, sure to close the hatch behind him.

They landed knee-deep in waste Han was trying not to think about. The lighting was very dim, and all red, but he was pretty sure Erso was giving him a judgemental look to rival Chewie's. "Now what?"

"Now, Erso—Galen, can I call you Galen?"

"You may," Erso said.

"Now, Galen, we wait for the kid to come through for us."

Galen gave him another look. "_The kid_?"

"Y'know. Short, blond-haired, blue-eyed, looks ready to cry or punch something at any moment. Luke Skywalker. That kid."

"You mean," Galen's voice broke, "the kid who _turned me in_?"

"I mean the kid who turned you in for the sake of sending me to get you out, yes." Han smiled winningly. Maybe if he seemed confident enough Galen wouldn't see how kriffing terrified he was. "He's gonna hack a console and open these doors any minute now—preferably _before_ this compactor starts compacting—and then we're gonna run for it. Hangars with hyperdrive-equipped ships ain't far from here."

"And then where will we go?"

"The Dantooine sector. I'm supposed to drop you off there, where the Rebellion are supposed to be, so you can—well, the kid said _so you can tell them what you told him_, whatever that means. And then I'm free as a bird to go anywhere I want." _To go find Chewie._

Galen was quiet for a moment. "And then the Rebels will be able to mount an attack on Scarif?"

. . .well. Sounds like Han Solo just got himself into _much_ deeper poodoo than he'd thought.

"Sure?" He shrugged. "Whatever the message you gave the kid was. I just know—"

A grinding cut him off.

He flinched. Eyed the walls nervously, lest they start sweeping in to end his life in one almighty, _embarrassing_ squash, but no—it was the door.

_It was the door._

It screeched open to reveal a sliver of white light, a grey, unadorned, _empty_ corridor beyond.

"Told you the kid would come through," Han said, and clambered towards the light.

* * *

The alarm reached them soon after Luke returned to his own quarters, awkward and jittery now that he was truly alone for the first time in weeks. When he arrived, Mara was sitting reading a report on one of the sofas in the main area, and she frowned at him.

"Where's Solo?"

Panic seized his throat, but he tried to keep calm, to keep up the act. He'd have to in front of Tarkin, anyway.

"I haven't seen him since we left the detention block. . ."

"Did you give him the slip?" Mara accused.

_That_ was when the alarm blared. Someone had discovered Han and Erso missing.

"I think," Luke said, and the dread in his voice was not faked, only misplaced, "he gave _me_ the slip."

They didn't bother waiting for the summons. They were up on the bridge within minutes, panting from the long journey.

"Luke," Tarkin snapped, "what is the meaning of this? Where is your guard?"

"I didn't notice his absence until moments before the alarm," Luke snapped back, then added—before he could be chastised—"_sir_. I came straight here."

"_Why_ is your guard helping _a condemned, self-confessed traitor_ to _escape my ship_?"

"I have no knowledge of any faults in his loyalty," Luke lied. He glanced sideways pointedly—to Mara. "_I _did not pick him out for the position."

Tarkin scoffed. "I _will_ look into this later," he promised, glaring daggers. "If you are guilty of treason, boy, you know _exactly_ what the consequences will be."

Luke flinched—violently. He took a full step back and Mara took a step forwards, angling her body slightly, as if to shield him.

"Perhaps you should focus on recapturing the traitors, Governor," she informed Tarkin, "rather than threatening beings I was assigned to protect."

"You were assigned to _watch_ him, Inquisitor," Tarkin reminded her. Luke swallowed at the blatant confirmation of his suspicion. "And have no fear—we _are_ taking action."

Luke looked beyond the viewports of the bridge, into the abyss of stars beyond.

A _lambda_ shuttle, poorly shielded and sluggish, was trying to pick its way through a swarm of TIEs on its back. They were aiming to disable, not kill—Tarkin needed Erso alive for interrogation and testimony against Krennic, after all—but sparks still flashed all over the shuttle. Shocks rocked it. Luke's heart tried to grow wings and escape through his throat.

But Han was a good pilot, and he knew the advantages they had.

He wheeled around while the navigator calculated the coordinates, even as more and more vital and non-vital parts were shot off, sent spiralling into the dark.

And then there was a blink, a stretch of stars, and it was gone. A fire blossomed in its wake—the last non-vital piece blasted into oblivion—and Luke had an idea.

"They're dead," he announced. His voice was soulless.

Tarkin wasn't angry anymore. He was just at the end of his patience, _intensely _irritated, and ready to hurl Luke down a thousand steps. "They _jumped to hyperspace_, idiot boy."

"Yes," Luke said, "and with the damage they sustained—that last shot hit the area around their hyperdrive, I believe. . . the jump killed them. I sensed it."

He did not, in fact. Jumps to hyperspace took people lightyears away instantaneously, to a whole other dimension of physical matter, and they could not be sensed in the Force. But Tarkin, non-Force-sensitive as he was, did not know that. No one here did.

Except, he realised with dawning horror, Mara. Maybe, _maybe_, he'd convince her that such power to sense them even then was a Skywalker trait—

"He's right," Mara said. "I sensed it too."

Luke let out a breath he hadn't realised he was holding.

He did not look _shocked_, when he looked at her; that would've given him away. But he looked at her.

She just looked back.

* * *

"We will have to find you a new bodyguard the moment we return to Coruscant," Mara said when they re-entered their quarters. Luke was, inexplicably, exhausted. "The Emperor will not be pleased you have _lost_ one so quickly, particularly one he advised against in the first place, but—"

"Wait." Luke paused before entering his bunkroom, spinning on his heel to stare at her. "Palpatine was against Han's appointment?"

"_His Majesty_, when he showed me the list of candidates pulled together from all walks of Imperial service, advised that I pick someone with more discipline and experience," Mara corrected. "He said that someone who'd proved their loyalty time and time again would be ideal, but I felt that. . . _unorthodox_ as you and your sister have always been," she pursed her lips; whether it was to contain a smile or a sneer, he didn't know, "a more unorthodox bodyguard might suit you better."

Luke turned away from her to hide _his_ smile, now. "Goodnight, Jade," he called over his shoulder.

She huffed quietly. "Goodnight, Skywalker."


	46. Sins of the Family

The Imperials came when they'd almost entirely finished their evacuation, but their arrival was still sudden. One minute the blue skies of Dantooine were clear, the next they were strewn with silvery daggers, and Leia could sense the explosion of life as city-like ships loomed beyond atmosphere.

They raised the shield immediately, but Thrawn (if Luke was right; if it _was_ him leading the attack) was smart enough not to let that stall him. It was minutes before they spotted the trooper carriers descend, and Leia swallowed.

"Master Yoda?" she called out, jogging to where her diminutive master's lodgings were. "Are you ready to go? The Empire are here."

"Ready, I am." A shrivelled green head shoved its way out of the door. _Glared_ was too strong a word for the look he gave her, but it wasn't a pleasant gaze either. "Finished sulking, have you?"

"Absolutely not," she promised, "but I have no intention of seeing you die. There's a transport leaving _now_; you need to be on it."

"You will be on it too, hmm?"

"I want to assist the speeder pilots in the battle."

Yoda stared at her for a few minutes. "Eighteen, you are. No experience with those squadrons, or ranks, you have."

"But I have a strategy that can work!"

"Then inform the pilots, you must. With me, you must come, if to survive and help me rebuild the Jedi Order you are."

Leia muttered, "No one said anything about rebuilding the Jedi Order," but. . .

He was right.

She knew enough to understand that without drilling on their call signs, their preferred manoeuvres, and familiarity with the speeders they flew, she would not be a help to them out there.

She would see to fixing that later—ask Padmé if she could occupy a military position, train for it, rather than just a secretarial one—but for now. . .

"Ahsoka will show you where the ship is," she said. "I'll meet you there in a moment."

Before he could pierce her with that excruciating gaze—_disobedient are you being, young Skywalker?_—she jogged off.

"Wedge!" she shouted when she got into the hangar. She hastened her step to a sprint, then skidded to a halt in front of him, ignoring the stares and mutterings of the base's few other pilots around them.

"Leia?" He frowned, turned just as he got his helmet on. He'd been about to get into the landspeeder; he leaned against it now as he looked at her. "I didn't think you were flying with us."

"I'm not"—she kept the bitterness out of her voice pretty well, in her opinion—"but I just came to say one thing."

"If you're here to express your undying love for me, your timing could be better—"

"The walkers have a higher centre of gravity, and their legs are far less sturdy than they appear."

Wedge frowned. "Yes. . .? This is standard Imperial education, I _did_ go to Sky—"

"Your speeders come equipped with harpoons and tow cables, correct?" She shot a meaningful look at his speeder. His gunner—Hobbie, also one of the defectors from Skystrike, she realised—was looking at her oddly. "If you attach and loop it around the legs. . ."

". . .we can trip them up!" Wedge realised. "That's— that's a good tactic."

"I know you're just trying to slow them down," Leia said, smiling. "I don't think they can go much slower than on their sides."

"You're right." Wedge shook his head. "Thank you."

She smiled to hide the pang in her chest. It _was _a genius tactic—played to cover up the fact that it's creator had not been a genius liar. "Don't thank me," she said sadly, "thank my brother, if we see him again.

"_When_," she corrected hurriedly, and blinked fiercely. "When we see him again, sorry."

"No need to apologise." His voice was soft. Then he nodded to her, and made to climb into the speeder. "Now go, get off planet so we can cover you. And. . . may the Force be with you, Leia."

She smiled back at him. "May the Force be with you too."

* * *

She jogged back to where she'd promised she would meet Yoda, only for Ahsoka to firmly steer her in another direction.

"We're not putting all our Jedi in the same ship," she said grimly. "Master Yoda will go in that one, I'll go in my own ship, Kanan and Ezra are on the _Ghost_. . . and Padmé wants you in hers."

Leia didn't ask why. The thought of getting to be in her mother's presence throughout. . . _all of this_. . . to not be expected to know what to do herself, was wonderful.

Padmé's ship was sleek silver, a beautiful tribute to the Nubian model she'd had during her time as queen. Leia felt like an intruder, running up onto it, but a woman—Sabé, she realised when she smiled at her and found herself smiling back, it was Sabé—ushered her into a seat and told her to strap in.

Jyn was already there, and Leia exchanged reassuring nods with her; something loosened in her gut. She wondered why she wasn't with Saw, or with Captain Andor, but she supposed it was for the same reason that _she_ wasn't in with Yoda.

Don't put all your chips in with one gamble.

Don't keep everyone on the same planet when there's a Death Star on the loose.

"Taking off in five, my lady," the voice floated back from the cockpit. Padmé nodded to herself, and gave Leia a grim smile, seated opposite. "Four, three, two one. . ."

The ship lurched underneath them, but smoothly. Leia was suddenly hyperaware of the base they were leaving behind—blasting to oblivion, even, to keep the Empire from taking too much from it—and felt keenly the loss of her tiny bunkroom, even though it had seen so many nightmares; the hangar she and Yoda had trained in, even though she had raged and screamed; her mother's office, where she had cried and been supported and steadied in all the ways she needed it to most. Her tiny pack, of her lightsaber, her few changes of clothes and what few belongings she'd managed to scrounge together, felt very, very light on her shoulder.

Padmé smile at her, though it was melancholy. "You get used to it," she offered.

"The Imperial ships have formed a blockade around the base, my lady," a voice called back from the cockpit. "There are no holes for us to jump to lightspeed through."

Padmé set her mouth. "Sabé," she ordered, "contact the soldiers at the ion cannon; tell them to fire at will."

"Yes, my lady." Sabé switched on the comm, opened it to the Rebel frequencies and lifted it to her mouth to speak.

But before she could, a voice rang out of it:

_"Hello? Any Rebels out there listening? Because—_blast it_—my name's Han Solo, and I was sent by a kid called Luke Skywalker."_

Leia stared.

_Padmé_ stared.

They all exchanged looks.

But still only Sabé had the presence of mind to switch on the comm and reply, "Hello, Mr. Solo—this is Tsabin, a member of the Rebellion. Why did Luke send you?"

_"I am escorting an Imperial scientist I'm told has _vital_ information for the Rebellion."_ There was a distinct drawl to his voice; Leia disliked him on instinct. _"His name is Galen Erso."_

Silence followed the declaration.

Finally, Sabé said, "As you can see, Mr. Solo, we are not at liberty to stop and dock right now. However, be sure to meet us at these hyperspace coordinates, and we will see what you have brought us." Then she added, a little threateningly, "And if you are telling the truth."

Beside Leia, Jyn had gone as pale as a cloud.

* * *

"Sir?" Luke folded his arms at his back and tried to look attentive, diligent. "Is something wrong?"

The datapad he'd dropped off was still sitting to the side, untouched. Tarkin was peering at him thoughtfully.

"You are sure, Luke," he said, and his voice was cutting but it was always cutting; relatively, he was being almost gentle, "that Erso is dead?"

Luke stiffened. His heartbeat pounded in his temple. "Positive, sir. I sensed him die."

"So you said," Tarkin murmured. "As well as the Inquisitor."

"Sir?"

Tarkin stood abruptly. "If he had merely escaped, not died," he said, "we could have recaptured him—prevented him from spreading information about this most important of projects that way, preferable to death—and still glean _what_ he'd done to sabotage it. _What_, exactly, Krennic overlooked. But if he is dead, then I have little way of finding out what damage he dealt."

Not without sending thousands of engineers combing over the plans. Not without risking that Palpatine decided it was Tarkin's fault, before Tarkin could pull up evidence otherwise.

If Erso was dead, Tarkin had no weapon to accuse Krennic of incompetence with.

"Perhaps his plans can be searched?" Luke offered. "His accomplices?"

"All the members of his team have been taken in for interrogation, but they have yielded nothing. Either they were a part of his treason, which would suggest an unusual resistance to such techniques, or they genuinely know nothing."

Luke bit his tongue.

Tarkin glanced at him. "You are exceptionally skilled at interrogation, are you not?"

He bit his tongue again. "I have a skill with sensing the truth, sir, but I feel in this case it would be worthless. From what I could glean from him in our conversation, Erso was too paranoid to have shared his plan with anyone. He spent years hiding it, while working with a wholly Imperial-approved team. He did not get that far by being careless."

"_He himself_ was a part of that Imperial-approved team, you are aware." Luke nodded. "And yet, despite his paranoia, he told _you_."

Luke gave the tensest of shrugs. "I was bloody, injured." He pointedly kept any judgement or bitterness form his tone. "I'm young. I'm convincing—I was using the Force to cloud his judgement." And then he smiled, a little viciously. "And I'm told I don't look extremely threatening."

Tarkin barked a laugh. "That, son of Vader, you do not."

Luke. . . shivered, at that.

"Nevertheless," Tarkin continued, "we are still left with the same conundrum as before. We do not know what his sabotage was. We do not know how successful it was. And we do not know who he may have been colluding with, or who he may have already told."

And then, Luke realised slowly, was his chance.

Erso had given him a place—an archive, where the Death Star plans were kept.

If he could make them go there _right now_. . .

"Then we should study his plans and his notes," Luke suggested. "_And_ all his communications from the last ten, fifteen years."

"All of them?" Tarkin said dryly.

"Ideally."

Tarkin studied him for a few more minutes. "You have your father's thoroughness, at least." Luke tensed. "And you have a point—that may be ideal. I will send agents to Scarif, to access their data vaults. They have a record of everything from Project Stardust."

Luke fought to keep his breathing from quickening. No—_they_ needed to go, _he_ needed to go—

But he nodded calmly. "If there is anything which details what Erso has done—and what Krennic failed to catch him doing—it will be there."

Then he went in for the kill.

"I only hope that whatever it is, Krennic hasn't _buried it_," his voice held disgust that was only half-faked, "in an attempt to save his own skin."

Tarkin narrowed his eyes.

"You are right," he said. "There is a risk of that—and if Krennic has managed to—"

He broke off. "Order the captain to set a course for Scarif," he snapped. Luke jumped at the sudden ferocity in his voice, but fought to hide his grin. "This is something I will have to handle _myself_."

Luke nodded. "Yes, sir."

"And Luke?"

He froze halfway to the door as Tarkin aborted his motion to sit down in favour of rounding the desk, laying a hand on Luke shoulder. Luke looked up to meet his gaze, feeling like a chastised child.

"I regret that I had to be so harsh with you," Tarkin told him. "But I do not regret that I was. Keep up this exemplary behaviour, and I will never have to be again." He released his shoulder. "You are fast absolving yourself of the sins of your family."

Tarkin's praise felt oily, greasy; it clung to his skin.

"Thank you, sir," Luke said, and was finally allowed to leave.

* * *

The ion cannon fired and one of the Destroyers encircling them went down in a crackle of blue, white and gold. Padmé's ship—the _Mourner_, it was called, Leia remembered—leapt to hyperspace in its wake, the violet of the felled ship receding to the violet streaks of hyperspace. Leia stared out the viewport at them in fascination.

Her foot was tapping on the floor. She hoped that man—Solo—managed to jump to hyperspace before a Destroyer or TIE got him. . .

They were in hyperspace for only a few minutes; whatever world they were heading for, it was nearby. They dropped back into realspace extremely soon, and Leia scrambled back to the cockpit for a decent view. There was a rumble as they passed through the planetary rings, then her gaze was caught by the moons in the sky, but otherwise it looked similar to Dantooine: a farming planet, with rich, dark earth, though the rolling fields were interspersed with crags and juts of mountain.

At her back, where Jyn had followed her in, she heard a gasp, and a murmur.

"Lah'mu."

Leia glanced at her. "You know this place?"

Jyn didn't take her eyes off it. "I—" She shook her head. "We used to live here. It. . . was the last time I saw my father."

Lah'mu was Jyn's Tatooine.

Leia felt a lump in her throat.

They made to head for a landing up in the mountains—there was a decent plateau that the pilots evidently thought would fit both the _Mourner_ and the unwieldy Imperial shuttle that had just joined them in atmo—but Jyn shook her head. "Wait. A little further."

A pilot gave her a sceptical glance.

"Please." Her voice broke. "Just over the Hag— that is, just over the tallest mountain to the north. There's another plain, with a little farm, and a lot of field area to land safely in." She gave them a challenging look, then added: "It'll be more sheltered than in the middle of the mountain range."

They rolled their eyes, but acquiesced. The shuttle followed them closely; Leia didn't take her gaze off that approaching shuttle.

Solo. . . with news from her brother. . .

They set down calmly, gently, on the field. The _lambda_ shuttle landed opposite them; both ramp extended like a mutual greeting.

Leia was on her feet in a moment, but—unsurprisingly—she wasn't the first. Jyn was already there, ready to go.

Sabé grasped her shoulder on the way out. "Don't rush in because of your personal attachment," she warned, "we don't know it's not a trap."

"It's not a trap," Leia said calmly. "I can sense it."

Jyn nodded, shaking Sabé's hand off. "If Leia can rush into every situation and Amidala can throw resource after resource at rescuing Skywalker, then I can see my father."

No one could argue with that.

Her footsteps churned the tilled earth to sludge, she ran fast enough; Leia jogged to keep up, flecking her clean, _borrowed_ fatigues with mud. She could sense the others approaching at more of a distance, but the moment she clapped eyes on the two men descending the ramp, she was impossible to catch.

"_Papa!_"

The slightly shorter and older of the two men stiffened at the shout; Leia saw his head swivel, face crease—

Then they collided, and Jyn's arms were around her father before he could blink.

"Papa," she whispered. Leia came to a stop about a metre away from them, awkward in. . . _witnessing_ this.

Her heart twinged.

Erso was staring down at his daughter with a reverence that gutted Leia; he reached out a trembling hand to rest on the top of her brown head. It shook, hard.

"Stardust?" he whispered, and the word floored Leia.

Stardust_._

Project. . . Stardust.

She didn't even want to _begin_ to think about what that could mean.

Jyn was nodding fiercely, eyes glinting with tears, her face split in an open-mouthed smile or grimace of relief. Erso stared at her.

"It's me, Papa," she said. Her voice wobbled. "It's Jyn."

"_Stardust_. . ." Then his arms had snaked around her torso again and she was burying her face in his chest.

"Look at you," he murmured, raw, "you're all grown up."

The man behind Erso—Solo—cleared his throat.

"Let them reunite," Leia snapped at him.

He glared at her. "By all means, sweetheart, but I suggest we get out of the open. I'm pretty sure no Imps followed us here, but I don't wanna risk it."

That. . . was a fair point.

"Alright," she said. "Come onto the _Mourner_, and we can head to base and talk there."

"Didn't your base just get invaded?"

"The _next_ base."

Solo crossed his arms. "Then sure, take the man," he drawled. "So long as you can drop me off somewhere and I can be on my way—"

Sabé caught up with them, then, and grimaced; "I'm afraid not, Mr. Solo."

"_Captain_ Solo," he corrected irritably.

"Captain Solo, my apologies."

Her politeness didn't get her very far with him. He just narrowed his eyes at her. "And why not?"

Sabé, dwarfed by him though she was, refused to be intimidated. "Because I'm afraid, _Captain Solo_, that this is a military organisation, and considering you and Mr. Erso just came from the Empire, we cannot let you go or take anything you say on good faith until you're assessed and have given your testimony."

"You're _arresting_ me?"

"Don't think of it that way," Padmé said, coming up behind Sabé. Solo did a double take when he looked from her, to Sabé, to Leia. "We just need to hear what you have to say, and be in a situation where the council can all listen at once, and all ask questions, so we can be as thorough as possible. I'm sure you understand."

His eyes did not widen from their slits.

"Afterwards," Padmé promised, calmly but a little begrudgingly, "you have my word that we will provide you with transportation off the base and to a world of your choice."

"And a favour?"

Padmé stilled.

Han jabbed a finger at her. "I want all of that, plus one favour. It ain't much—any _morally upright_ Rebels ought to be happy to do it."

"That depends what the favour is, Captain Solo."

"Help me rescue my co-pilot from an Imperial spice mine."

Leia blinked.

"Of course," Padmé said without hesitating. They _did_ need his cooperation, after all. "If you come with us peacefully now, cooperate, and answer any questions we address to you, we will help you rescue your partner and give you both passage to any world you wish." Her lips twitched. "Provided you swear to keep our base's location a secret, of course."

"Of course," Solo drawled, "but I'm surprised you're so quick to trust me with that sorta power."

"My son would not have sent you to us, transporting someone as vital as Galen Erso, if he did not trust you totally, Captain Solo. And I trust his judgement."

Solo did a double take. "Your _son_?"

"Yes. Luke Skywalker." She smiled proudly. "He _did_ send you?"

Han nodded. When Leia folded her arms across her chest, his gaze was drawn to her; she saw his eyes flicker, saw him put together the similarities between her and Padmé's faces—

"So, Solo," Leia said, "what news do you have from my brother?"

* * *

After that, they persuaded Solo onto the _Mourner_—blasting the Imperial shuttle to dust once they were airborne—and jumped to Yavin IV.

The next base.

No—the _main_ base of the Rebellion, the biggest base, rather than the legislative one they'd just evacuated. The moment they reverted to realspace, Leia could sense Yoda's, Ahsoka's, Kanan's and Ezra's presences glowing under the jungle canopy, and a part of her she'd never admit to relaxed.

When they pierced the curve of cerulean atmosphere, like the edge of a painted egg, she could even begin to see down to the ships landed on the base below. It was a repurposed Massassi Temple, she'd already known that much; she doubted there were a great many large spaces for hangars within it, so the ships were all idling on the flagstones outside. X-wings. . .

Her gaze tracked them as they went. As they got closer, the markings grew clearer, more familiar, and. . .

Biggs. Wedge. Hobbie.

Most of the others, from the ones she knew.

There _were_ a few missing, and she had a brief melancholy moment as she wondered who had died in the golden fields of Dantooine, but it was overshadowed by relief. It was best not to dwell on the dead.

They landed with barely a whisper, an escort headed by her _favourite_ person already approaching.

Padmé laughed when she saw the look on her face. "You don't have to talk to Bail," she teased. "Go talk to the pilots instead—ask if that tactic you suggested worked."

Leia nodded. When she walked out of the ship, she walked past Organa without so much as giving him a glance.

Wedge, beside his X-wing, turned and smiled when he heard her approach. "You survived! I was getting worried."

"It takes more than that to kill _me_," she informed him. "How. . . how many survived on your end?"

"Almost everyone," Wedge said. He made a valiant effort to stay cheery, but the familiar cloud of grief clouded the bags under his eyes. "A lot more than would have if you hadn't told me the thing with the tow cables—that was viciously effective." He grinned. "Now they all think I'm a genius for coming up with it."

She crossed her arms. "_You_ are stealing credit from my brother."

"Eh." His smile didn't dim. "From what little impression I got from him, he wouldn't mind."

"No," Leia had to agree, a little wistfully. The casual banter was fading again now, replaced by that melancholy. "He wouldn't."

Then she caught sight of something over his shoulder.

Solo, in the middle of being escorted into the temple, had stopped dead, staring. Leia followed his gaze, to. . .

Qi'ra.

He was staring at Qi'ra, who stared back. Her usual practised charm, calculated control, had dropped to a mask of white horror.

"Excuse me," Leia said, edging past Wedge to head over to her. "Qi'ra?"

"Who is that?" her friend asked, a little shakily.

"Captain Han Solo, he just came from the Empire and brought a defecting Imperial scientist with him." Leia caught her arm. "Why?"

"He. . ." Qi'ra swallowed, taking a deep breath. She squared her shoulders. "He was my childhood l— best friend."

Leia frowned. "And that's bad because. . .?"

"The last time I saw him," Qi'ra said darkly, gaze fixed on his retreating back, "I betrayed him."


	47. Fool's Errand

Scarif, Luke thought the first time he beheld it, looked more like an Imperial beach resort than home to the most important archives in the galaxy.

_Sand_, and the irritation it never failed to be, rarely gave the impression of a neat, coordinated, _organised_ bureaucratic system.

The _Carrion Spike_, Tarkin's personal transport ship, slid out of the hangar and through space like a knife through velvet. The planet-wide shield around Scarif accentuated the blue curve of the atmosphere, so much so that Luke couldn't tell where one ended and the other began, and he narrowed his eyes at its single square hole. The shield gate.

There was no way he'd be able to get a copy of the Death Star plans and still keep his cover long enough for him to accompany Tarkin off world when he saw fit to leave. The moment he made a break for them, he'd be a marked man.

Above all, he needed that shield gate open if he wanted to get out with the plans alive.

There was a murmur of correspondences, of codes, and now the _Spike_ was sliding through the atmosphere, levelling out to land with barely a whisper on the designated landing pad. When Luke glanced outside, a harried-looking man with an escort of twelve stormtroopers was half-walking, half-jogging to the boarding ramp as it lowered with a hiss.

"Governor Tarkin!" he said, snapping to attention. "You honour us with your presence."

"Pray that you can honour _me_ with your effectiveness," Tarkin snapped back, though he granted the man a cool smile at his deference. "Cease the pleasantries, lieutenant, and escort me to the Citadel Tower; I would speak with the commandant."

"Yes, sir!"

Luke bit his lip to keep himself from laughing. The overwhelming emotion he could sense from Tarkin, besides a mounting, eager urgency, was the urge to roll his eyes.

He shared a glance with Mara; both their lips curled upwards. They'd flattened by the time Tarkin turned around to bark orders to his entourage, but the exchange warmed Luke nonetheless.

The moment they started walking, though, they no longer needed _warming_. Scarif was a tropical world, and Imperial uniforms were either dark grey or black; he was sweating within moments. Sand stung his eyes in the wind. Tarkin never stopped looking imperious, but his feathers were definitely ruffled.

It was a relief when they finally entered the Citadel Tower. They were, well, _inside_, and it was easy to dust off most of the infernal sand grains when they were waiting for the turbolift to ascend.

Tarkin didn't bother—he held himself in a way that meant they seemed to drop off him, like they were too awed by his might to cling for any longer—but Luke was fiercely brushing himself down when Tarkin finally spoke.

"So, Luke," he said, almost _conversationally_. "Since it was your excellent idea to come here, where would you propose we start? He has sent hundreds of thousands of messages and dispatches over the years he worked against the Empire; it would take hours to search through them all."

"And yet we have to," Luke said baldly. "Sir, we don't know what codes he could've used, who he told—he had to collaborate with so many people over the years, in order to make the impossible possible, and any one of them could have been a Rebel spy he was passing information to. I'd say we examine the messages he sent in his first few years—before he settled himself in to wait for the long term, and still had hope of it being over quickly; he may have let more things slip then."

Tarkin didn't say anything again after that, not until the turbolift arrived at the command room of the tower and they stepped out, but Luke sensed his approval.

"Commandant Convarion," he snapped, and a pale man with a pinched, rat-like face jumped to attention. His eyes seemed to be set in a permanent state of wideness.

"Governor Tarkin!"

Tarkin descended several stairs to the window at the end of the room, overlooking the sandy islets, tombolos and the landing pads and transit tubes build over and between them. "I assume you received my message informing you of my imminent visit?"

Convarion swallowed. "Yes, Governor, but I couldn't help but note that you did not specify the _reason_ for your sudden visit—"

"No. I did not."

Taking that as the dismissal it was, Convarion shut up.

Tarkin ordered, "Bring up all the messages Galen Erso, head scientist on Project Stardust, sent and received in and between the years four AFE and seven AFE, and have your best comm analysts study them _all_."

"Governor?" Convarion's shock—his _disbelief_—briefly eclipsed his obsequience. "_All of them_?"

"_Yes_, all of them. We have a traitor in our midst, commandant," Tarkin informed him, "and now we must enact damage control before he damages our Empire more than he already has.

"And," he added suddenly, voice silky, "ensure that Director Krennic does not receive word of this." He turned on his heel and made to mount a few more steps, so he towered over everyone in the room. "Let's not grant that man any more opportunities to discard or overlook damning evidence just to further his pathetic excuse for a career."

Convarion stiffened, worked his jaw, but all he said was: "Yes, sir. Men," he glanced around the operations room; half the gazes were on him, half on Tarkin, "get to it."

* * *

"So, Han Solo," Padmé said, leaning forwards in her chair around the holotable. All the other 'chairs' save Organa and Mothma's were filled with blue holograms, but Leia and a few other, lower-ranking Rebels were milling about in the background behind them. "Explain to us again how you came into the service of Luke Skywalker."

Solo squirmed in his stand at the centre of the ring. He didn't seem to know where to look, so he just fixed his gaze on Padmé. She always seemed like she knew what she was doing.

He grimaced at the word _service_, but explained grumpily, as he had on the flight here: "I was—_am_, still—a smuggler. My partner was captured by the Empire and put to work in the spice mines of Kessel, so I managed to get into the mines as a bodyguard to the administrator with the hope of rescuing him." He shrugged. "Then a call came through right from the top, for all _skilled bodyguards_ to be put on a list and be _judged_ by some fancy Imperial officer on Coruscant, the administrator chose _me_. I dunno why, maybe he wanted to be rid of me." He flashed a humourless smile, teeth white. "And then, from there, I was chosen out of a hundred others by some irritable redhead—don't ask me why—and suddenly I was the kid's bodyguard."

"Why did Skywalker need a bodyguard?" Mothma asked, her Core accent unnaturally calm and unreadable. Leia. . . didn't _like her_, per se, but from what she'd seen about her recent speech denouncing the Empire and rallying the still-disjointed Rebel cells, the speech that had got her expelled from the Senate—not to mention the way she fought and worked, as if she was one of the soldiers herself. . . she figured she respected her deeply.

A lot more than she did Organa, anyway.

Han shrugged. "Beats me. I saw him lay into Red during sparring matches like a man possessed. But he was injured a lot, he had panic attacks, and. . ." He scuffed the toe of his boot against the floor. "I helped him out, in those times. Red did her part, but she was a kid too; she obviously didn't know what to do."

Leia felt, against all odds, a surge of affection for him—or gratitude, perhaps. He'd helped her brother, and been earnest about it.

She couldn't dislike him for that.

"And who is this _Red_?" Organa asked. Leia gritted her teeth. She'd _told_ the council about Jade already, weeks ago; if Organa couldn't put that together on his own—

Solo shrugged. "Luke called her _Jade_, or _Mara_, and the officer in charge called her _Inquisitor_, but I dunno who she was."

"Leia?" Padmé turned to her. "Do you?"

Leia folded her arms. "Mara Jade," she said. "The Sixth Sister, a member of the Inquisitorius. Luke always had a strange, ill-advised friendship with her; when he found a record of all the Inquisitors' birth names, the one their families had been given before they were stolen, her told her hers."

"A strange, ill-advised _friendship_?" Organa asked.

Leia said nothing, arms still folded.

Blast him, anyway—he was always too kriffing perceptive or blunt for his own kriffing good, in the Senate, and then he _wondered_ why everyone had him pegged as a Rebel sympathiser.

"That is not the important thing here," Padmé chided, though Leia could hear in her voice that she wanted to learn more—_more_, about the son she'd never known. "Captain Solo, why did Luke send you to us?"

It wasn't only Leia who noticed the slip from _Skywalker_ to _Luke_. A few people in the wings started to mutter.

Solo just said, "He told me he'd help me escape, so I could go back to rescuing my friend, if only I took Erso with me. Never told me why Erso was so important—only that he was, and that you'd all appreciate it."

"He is," Padmé told him, smiling a little, "and we do. And we will not renege on our promise to you."

Then she cleared her throat. "Now, unless any other councillors have further questions, I thank you, Captain Solo. I believe we are finished."

A stony-faced guard came to usher Solo away, towards the door. When he exited, he passed by the next person to be questioned—and did a double take when he saw her face, although he _had_ seen her before. "Qi'ra?"

Qi'ra ignored him.

"Fulcrum," Padmé addressed her officially and Leia did a double take. She'd known Qi'ra was an intelligence officer, a spy, but she hadn't realised she was of the same brand as Luke and Leia, Ahsoka, Andor— "You claim to know this man?"

"We both grew up on Corellia, in the gang of the White Worms, under Lady Proxima," Qi'ra explained. "We were childhood. . . _friends_."

Leia waited for Organa to call _that one_ out. He didn't.

"I haven't seen him in nearly ten years."

"And why not?" Mothma asked gently. She had a datapad in her lap; she was taking notes.

Qi'ra moved her arms from their neutral positions hanging at her sides to folded across her chest. "I was still a member of Crimson Dawn, at that point," she admitted, voice level, and Leia's gaze was drawn inexorably towards the shirt cuffs that no doubt covered her tattoo. "I'd just killed Dryden Vos, my immediate superior, but I knew that running from— from _Maul_," the word was thick with hatred, "was futile. I told him I'd meet him outside the ship, on Savareen, between the edge of the desert and the edge of the sea." She shrugged. "I lied.

"I took off with the ship, and never saw him again."

"I see." Leia didn't know this council member, present only in holo form, but his accent was of Ryloth when he spoke.

"Ten years can change a person," he continued, "but from what you knew of him then, do you think we can trust him?"

"Even in the slums of Corellia, preyed on by the White Worms, he managed to be a hopeful, decent person," she replied. "When I saw him after we'd both found a way off, he was genuine, and honest, and positive."

Leia raised her eyebrows, and thought of the sour, begrudgingly good man who'd been in here mere moments ago.

Where the _kriff_ had _this_ happy-go-lucky person gone?

Qi'ra hadn't been here to watch Han's testimony, so it meant all the more when she said: "He loves his co-pilot, enough to do anything for him, even if he never admits it. And he is—I've always said—a good guy." She shrugged. "He's a good guy."

"Thank you, Fulcrum," Padmé said. "I think that's all we need from you."

Qi'ra nodded, and exited the room without being prompted.

Finally, Padmé called, "Galen Erso."

Jyn, watching the proceedings on the other side of the room to Leia, tensed when she saw him come out, but he was perfectly well. He stood tall, straight-backed if tired, and the quick bob of his throat, the whiteness of his knuckles, was all that betrayed his nerves.

"You were an Imperial scientist for years," Padmé reminded him. "_The_ Imperial scientist, working dutifully on a weapon we recently learned about, with the firepower to destroy entire planets."

"I was," Erso confirmed.

"Why did you cooperate?"

Erso glanced at his daughter, looking at him with a hopeful, supporting smile, and swallowed.

"Krennic thought I was the only one who knew enough about kyber crystals to form a weapon that could harness enough of their power to make this weapon work," he said, clearly and unapologetically. "I knew that if I refused to work, or took my own life, it would only be a matter of time before he realised that I wasn't—that he could complete it without me.

"So I chose to involve myself—to _make_ myself indispensable—so that, all the while, I could plant a weakness in it, and lay the groundwork of my revenge."

Everyone in the room seemed to be holding their breath.

"What weakness did you place?" Mothma said eventually. It was the only thing anyone could say.

"A reactor shaft," Erso replied. He lifted his chin. "Two metres wide, shielded, but. . . one hit to that reactor shaft by a fighter and the whole system goes down. It would cause a chain reaction, and the entire station would explode."

_The entire station would explode_.

Leia could see it, the way she could see a sun in the sky: sparks and debris, sparkling against the black of night, brighter than any Empire Day firework.

But—

"_Two metres wide_?" someone—probably a pilot—burst out. "That's _impossible._"

Leia couldn't blame them. But. . .

_That, I think, is why we fail._

All was possible, through the Force.

Behind him, the door slid open to admit a white-robed figure. Ahsoka smiled at Leia briefly before moving around to whisper something in Padmé's ear, then stepping out of the way.

"You would need the plans, an analysis of them, in order to find it," Erso continued. "The moment I completed them, access to the full plans was stripped from me for security reasons, but a copy is stored in the Citadel Tower on Scarif. If there is any hope of destroying it, you need those plans."

"Go to _Scarif_?" a human man in a holo burst out. "We joined an alliance, not a suicide pact."

"Why should we take your word for it?"

"There's not a _shred_ of hope for success there!"

"Councillors, please," Padmé said quietly, and they fell silent. "We have just received word that our currently highest placed spy _is_ on Scarif, right now, and he has the intent to steal the plans."

It did not take a genius to work out who she was talking about.

"_Skywalker?_ He's insane, the one who thought up this mad quest in the first place—"

"Don't insult my brother like that!" Leia snapped, but she didn't think it was heard over the rising cacophony.

"His information has proven correct so far—"

"Are we really going to entrust the fate of trillions to a _Sithspawn_—"

"This is _clearly_ an Imperial trap to lure us into a final battle—"

"If it's war you want, you'll fight alone—"

"Councillors!" Padmé shouted. At her glare, they again fell silent. "I have faith in Skywalker to achieve this," she continued, "_but_," she lay her hands on the holotable, "our informant does not believe he will be capable of doing this alone. A distraction is necessary, a Rebel invasion; we must send troops to assist him, or _all is lost_."

"All is lost if we sacrifice our forces on a fool's errand concocted by some _boy_!"

"And how will you feel when this Death Star is staring down Uyter, Senator Jebel, this is _not something we can afford to compromise on_—"

"How many soldiers will we need?" Organa cut in suddenly, and he was a respected enough voice that the sound of it hushed the others.

For now.

Padmé frowned, but said earnestly: "As many as we can rally."

"Then I shall use my contacts to stir up as much support as I can," Organa promised. "There are small pockets of resistance closer to Scarif than we are; they can begin the attack, and we can join them once it is underway."

He raised his voice, "If anyone else would like to pledge their support for this"—a glance at Jebel—"_fool's errand_, speak now."

"I will." The first was a rough-spoken Mon Calamari, shaking his fist in vehemence.

Then more came—_I will, I will, I will_—and Leia, bit by bit, found some tension deep inside her unwinding.

Organa caught her eye and nodded, smiling.

She couldn't quite bring herself to _smile_, but she nodded back.

"This alliance is splitting into _factions_."

"This is a democracy, Senator Pamlo," Padmé told her. "You all have been outvoted, but you need not commit Taris to the fight. Once we have the plans, we will _all_ benefit."

The woman, dark-skinned and beautiful, nodded slowly when she met Padmé's eye.

"Then this _is_ war," she said.

Organa confirmed: "It is."

And for a moment, Leia found, she couldn't see him as the unruly senator who'd irritated and demeaned and condescended to her for so many years. Instead, he was just a steadfast, dedicated Rebel.

Which, she supposed wryly, was what he always had been.

* * *

"Ensign! Deliver this to Lord Vader!"

Vader sensed the ensign's terror the moment he marched onto the bridge; with a wave of his hand, he yanked the datapad towards him.

"Deliver me bad news yourself, lieutenant, or I may not find myself so merciful next time."

He strode forwards before he even cared to acknowledge the stammered _yes, my lord_.

The view beyond the viewports, as always, was a vista of stars. Vader listened to Piett's report, stayed staring out at it, before bothering to switch on the datapad.

If he could, he would've gasped.

_Rebels on Scarif. . ._

That was a concern on its own—it was a major military base, a vital piece of bureaucracy in the machine of the Empire, and it could not be taken.

_Rebels on Scarif. . ._

And— Tarkin was there, last he'd heard.

_Rebels on Scarif. . ._

So, therefore, was Luke.

The corners of the datapad crumpled under his grip.

_Luke_.

Who was engaging in his Rebel folly, still, even under Tarkin's nose.

_Luke_.

Who was trying to get the Death Star plans, probably, in his fool's errand to try to destroy it.

_Rebels on Scarif. . ._

With a snap, he strode off the bridge, and back to his quarters. A call was connected the moment he barked the order, and he knelt, waiting for his master to deign to respond.

* * *

His request to diverge from his current mission over Bromlarch to assist the Imperial facility at Scarif was denied, of course.

He didn't know what else he'd been expecting.

* * *

His doom began like this: slowly, with the vague awareness of ships and new life appearing in the skies far above his head, then faster, with the shriek of an alarm throughout every inch of the base.

They were under attack.

_They were under attack._

Tarkin snapped his head up, eyes seeking the dots and ovals that flashed in the sky, just beyond atmosphere—watched as they double, tripled, until there were more than could be counted. He didn't growl, didn't make a sound, but his lips pressed together until they went white.

"To the Citadel Tower," he ordered, and then they were hurrying across the islets and transport tubes to get there, leaving the relative shelter of their temporary accommodations behind. They were safe, they were sturdy, they were well-defended. . . but they were not the centre of command.

They moved hurriedly, but didn't break into a run at first, stately and dignified in their procession. Then X-wings zipped overhead.

Luke gasped, ducking instinctively even if they were hundreds of metres above him. They'd—

The Rebels had penetrated the shield gate.

Or rather, a few lucky squadrons had managed to get in before it gate closed.

When he looked up, that tiny square of atmosphere was now the same blue as the rest of it.

He nearly stopped in shock. _No._

_No._

How— how was he supposed to get out?

What was this supposed to _achieve_?

He could've got to the Death Star plans by himself, given time—_no, you couldn't have,_ said a man's voice he'd been ignoring for months, _let them help_—but now, if the security was high—

—_if the shield gate was up so he couldn't get out_—

—he— he was—

_No._

What were they _thinking_?

"Move!" Mara shouted in his ear, so loud it propelled him backwards. Everyone in their party was running, now, _sprinting_, legs stretching, bodies bent over double—

There was a fierce roar, and Luke, despite Mara's hand tugging on his arm, turned—

The blast of the bomb the Y-wing had dropped shook the ground; it threw him into a small bed of sand. He rolled, and got to his feet.

His breaths pulsed in and out of his lungs, forceful, too fast; the wind was picking up—

"Snap _out of it_, Skywalker!" Mara smacked his shoulder. "Come _on_—"

But where the Y-wing had been, there was now an X-wing gaining on them—no, gaining on _Tarkin_, it'd recognised the great and vaunted governor, and they were close enough to be collateral damage—

Crimson churned the ground behind their heels; Luke could feel the heat of the barrage against the back of his neck. He _ran_.

Then Mara tackled him.

They rolled, off the islet, stopping before they hit the water. They lay there for a moment, waiting for the roar to die down.

They both flinched as several deaths registered in the Force—but not Tarkin's. More's the pity.

They were close enough to feel each other's breath on their faces.

Luke scrambled to his feet the moment the X-wing was gone. "Come on!"

Mara scoffed, but took his proffered hand.

They caught up to Tarkin's entourage quickly enough, wind lashing the sand off of them with every step, and Luke tried to relax. His hands were shaking; he gripped them into fists.

Tarkin was missing his two bodyguards, but remained as stoic as ever. He looked unfazed—unfeeling.

"Come," he said, and strode over the last few steps before. . .

"Wait!" Luke whirled to see the X-wing shooting for them again, raking its fire over large swathes of the sand bank and leaving a road of molten glass—

—and there was a _shriek_, and a TIE whipped out of nowhere to take it to pieces. A whole squadron of them swarmed the atmosphere, rising like flies from bases dotted all over the islets, until the sky was thick with black, silver and blood.

Luke barely dared to breathe as the debris of the X-wing rained down around them.

Mara threw a hand on his arm and dragged him inside. The door slammed shut behind him; sand pooled on the immaculate black floor.

"You two, with me," Tarkin ordered, pointing to the first two stormtroopers who walked past. They didn't hesitate before taking a place at his side within the turbolift.

Luke made to join him as well, but Tarkin held up a hand. "I will be going to the command room to take control; before I get there I want you to visit the stormtrooper garrison, and impress upon them that they answer to _me_, not Convarion. I do not expect him to resist the shift of power," he smiled thinly, "but it is best to be prepared."

Luke nodded. "Yes, sir."

"Leave someone you trust to oversee them, and ensure they do not fail, then meet me in the command room. I will show you how a base is defended _without_ your father's esoteric idiosyncrasies."

Luke swallowed. "Yes, sir."

The turbolift door slammed shut, then it was ascending. He and Mara moved quickly in the direction of the stormtrooper garrison—they knew where on the ground floor it would be, as per standard Imperial regulations—and strode through the doors.

"Halt!" a trooper on duty with an orange pauldron immediately said, coming forwards with a hand on his blaster. There was an officer without armour in the corner, playing cards and drinking—_drinking!_ Luke thought with amusement, _Han would be entertained_—and it was to him that Luke addressed his orders.

"I represent Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin, who is temporarily taking over command of this base, and requests your troopers to standby for orders from him."

"Security code Aurek-Aurek-Two-Five-One," Mara added, and Luke watched with satisfaction as the officer's face drained of colours. The belligerent unit leader who'd come forwards backed off and snapped to attention.

"Yes, sir!"

"That was easy," Luke muttered. _Imperial obsequience._

"You still have to leave someone you trust behind," Mara reminded him.

Luke did not trust _anyone_ here.

"Mara," he said, watching her stiffen as she realised what he was doing, "stay here ready to direct them; I'll return to inform Governor Tarkin of the situation."

She glared at him, but a faint smile curled her lips when he clapped her on the shoulder. _Sure, saddle me with the boring task_, he heard murmured in his head. He ignored it.

He turned on his heel and strode out of the garrison without further ado, but it was when he was waiting for the turbolift—waiting _forever_, why was _everyone_ using it at once—that he realised:

The base was in turmoil.

The base was in panic.

There would never be a better chance for him to try to break into the Archives.

The turbolift finally arrived. Troopers flooded out; he stepped in, and closed the door before anyone else could come. His finger hovered over the button to the command deck. . .

. . .but if he arrived, who knew what task Tarkin would give him, to take him into direct combat against Rebels—against _possibly his sister_?

Who knew when he would ever get another chance like this?

His finger slid up, up to the button to take him to the floor the Archives were on, and pressed it.

So, he thought. It began, and continued, with the Archives.

* * *

It was a fast lift. Nobody else stopped it, or tried to get on, at any of the in-between floors. Perhaps he should have found that suspicious.

But what he _did_ find suspicious was that when he got to that floor, and walked through the empty corridors towards the access point of the vault, he could sense beings up ahead.

One of them unfortunately familiar.

Luke squared his shoulders, and kept walking.

The corridor turned a corner, and there was the seal to the vault. There was the station of the officer who guarded it. There were the stormtroopers who guarded _them_, blasters trained on Luke.

And there was Tarkin, standing in place of the usual officer, smiling at him in a way that Luke thought he could only have learnt from Palpatine.

"I had wondered why you were so insistent we come to Scarif," Tarkin greeted smoothly. "You were clever, I'll give you that. But not clever enough. Did you know that an Imperial shuttle similar to the one our fugitives stole was sighted over Dantooine, in the middle of the evacuation of a Rebel base?"

Luke didn't answer. The stormtroopers lifted their blasters higher at the nakedly calculating gaze he planted on them.

When he lit it, his lightsaber echoed loudly in the silence.

Tarkin had not dropped his smile. "We want him alive," he instructed, "but I'm sure the Emperor won't mind a few holes.

"Open fire."


	48. Shatterpoint Eight

Scarif was a _mess_ down there.

Leia stared down at it through the viewports on _Home One_, her mother giving rapid fire instructions next to her. Her throat was dry, her heart was pounding, because—

_Luke_.

She could sense him, down there. He was tense, he was anxious, but he was _here_.

She let out a breath she hadn't realised she'd been holding.

"We need to get that shield gate down!" the Mon Calamari leading the ship shouted. "It's the only way for our surviving forces to get out, and it's the only way those plans are ever getting out!"

"We need more pilots in the sky," another Mon Calamari snapped from their station. "They're getting annihilated."

Padmé—the political leader of the Alliance, not a military one—asked, "Then why don't we send more out? Incom just defected—we just got a massive surge of ships—"

"We've got enough birds, we just haven't got enough pilots," a human man snapped. "We've _always_ been short on pilots, despite the recent defections from Skystrike, Prefsbelt and Carida—and now they're outnumbering us ten to one. If we can dredge up _anyone_ willing to fly—"

"I will," Leia said.

Padmé turned to her in shock—and, momentarily, in terror. "Leia, you—" she swallowed, "you can fly?"

"Of course I can fly," Leia said.

The human man fixed her with a look. "Have you ever flown an X-wing before?"

"Not outside of the simulators, no, but I can do it."

He raised an eyebrow.

"I logged more hours on the simulators than I did for _TIE_ _fighters_ when I was with the Empire," not strictly true, but, "I'm Force-sensitive, too, and I've shown I can cooperate well with Biggs and Wedge. Let me fly; I can do it."

He looked utterly exhausted. He looked at Padmé who, if possible, looked even more exhausted—and scared.

Leia said, "If we don't get that shield gate down, Luke will die down there."

Padmé hissed out a breath, and turned to the man.

"Let her do it," she ordered. "Let as many people who volunteer do it, if they have the right background and can provide a droid."

"A droid—" Leia said.

"You can have Artoo. Your father used to have him."

Leia. . . _did not need that reminder right now_.

Padmé continued, "Program the X-wings, set up the chain of command, and _be quick about it_." She glanced down at the planet. "We don't have much time."

The man nodded. "Yes, ma'am."

* * *

Luke deflected the first volley of shots with ease; three of the six stormtroopers fell like dolls, dead. They bashed into the living ones, throwing their aims even wider, and Luke barely had to duck as he strode forwards.

One died when he seized it with the Force and threw it to the other side of the room, snapping its neck. The other two screamed when his lightsaber cut them down like crops.

He levelled that lightsaber at Tarkin.

Tarkin, arrogant to the last, smirked. Pulled out his own blaster.

And shot.

Luke dodged, but it was at too close a range to deflect; he shoved forwards, knocking the blaster from Tarkin's hand and shoving him to the floor.

A kick to his wrist. His lightsaber clattering away.

Luke narrowed his eyes. "So be it, then."

And he swung.

The first _crunch_ of cartilage was the most satisfying thing he'd heard in months, as was Tarkin's yelp of pain. Then quick as a whip his arm was seized in a bone-breaking grip and he _twisted_ to escape, legs flailing—

They connected. Tarkin's knees—he must be getting on in age now, they couldn't have been at their peak—collapsed underneath him.

Luke turned, panting, hand out to summon his lightsaber—

A kick to the back of his knees sent him sprawling. His own lightsaber smacked him in the head before spinning away again.

He growled, then coughed in agony when a foot connected with his ribs and he felt something splinter. He rolled before another foot could come and leapt to his feet, fists up—

He ducked to dodge Tarkin's attack and swung. While Tarkin staggered, Luke brought his hand up and blasted him into the wall. There was a _crunch_.

When Tarkin staggered to his feet again, he was gripping his shoulder as agony blared in the Force.

His gaze flicked to the left and Luke's followed.

The blaster.

_No_—

Luke summoned it to hand and vaulted over the troopers' bodies to get some distance between them but—

_The troopers had had blasters before they died_.

Tarkin smirked as he picked one up, levelled it at Luke—

Luke fired before he could. The shot went wide when Tarkin ducked behind the only cover in the Imperial-standard corridor: the officer's podium and computer terminal. Luke stopped firing.

If he fried that, there was no way he was getting into the vaults.

A _pew_ dragged him of his thoughts; he dived to the side but Tarkin's shot still grazed his left bicep. He shouted.

Tarkin's lips peeled back in a grin; he kept firing—

And Luke threw himself to the side again, bringing up his own blaster. He shot at Tarkin—_tentatively_, he still needed to get into the vault, he couldn't fry the computer terminal—but that grin only widened.

And Luke watched, heart in his throat, as Tarkin cocked his blaster and—

He could've stopped it. He could've reached out with the Force and seized his hand, _crushed_ his hand, if he'd had a split second more before he realised.

Tarkin shot into the console—once, twice, ten times. Then he turned to shoot at the electronic lock on the vault door.

Glowing holes peppered the metal; the screech of machinery sounded; smoke rose.

Luke slid his gaze to the vault doors—vast, taller than him, thicker than a pane of transparisteel on a Star Destroyer.

And now they were locked.

There was no way he was getting them open.

Red roared in his vision, then Tarkin was screaming.

The blaster fell from his right hand to land on the floor. He cradled his twisted, shattered hand to his chest and _glared_, retrieving the blaster to fire with his left—

And Luke's lightsaber flashed to his hand with a freezing irreverence; the deflected bolts went straight back at Tarkin now, heedless of the destroyed console. His already-injured shoulder, his thigh, his arm. Despite the heat of the moment, Luke felt like he was submerged in ice, everything around him moving at a glacial pace.

He wasn't going to kill him. Not yet. There was _infinite_ suffering he could inflict on him for this, for _everything he'd done, in the past months and years_, and the voices in his head promised that he would get what he was due—

But then Tarkin lunged when he was close enough, and for the barest instant his fingers seized his neck and he _squeezed_—

—and a stroke of Luke's saber dissevered his grasp.

And then the fog cleared from Luke's mind. He could hear his own breathing very loudly—no; that was the wind.

There was no wind in the Citadel Tower. There was only a hand at his feet and bruises at his neck and a lightsaber, red and ruthless, in his grip.

Tarkin did not flinch from death. He would not condescend or lower himself to the indignity of mercy. He would rather die hating Luke than live in his debt.

It made it both impossible and the easiest thing in the world for Luke to switch off his saber, and head for the vault door.

"Leave with your worthless life," Luke told him without bothering to look. He made a vague, dismissive gesture towards the corridor with the turbolift. "I don't give a shit what happens to you."

A flash in the Force—of pain, or resolve—was his only warning. He pivoted on his foot as Tarkin wrapped his crushed hand around the blaster, desperately, aim going wide in his agony—

It didn't matter. With a thoughtless flick, Luke could catch the bolt on his saber anyway, and it ricocheted.

Blood sprayed from Tarkin's throat. He collapsed in a pool of it, coughing it, writhing in it. His uniform darkened in red, red pulses.

Then there was a gargling sound, and all was still.

Luke took in a breath.

Then another one. Then another one.

He crumpled against the wall, chest heaving, eyes streaming. That—

That—

It was over.

For better or for worse—for _everyone_—it was over. He would never bow to Tarkin or Palpatine again.

He took a final deep breath and wiped his eyes. He didn't realise his own hands were bloody until his vision turned red, then pink, then clear. His side ached.

Broken ribs. It didn't feel like anything worse, but he'd have to be careful anyway.

And it didn't matter anyway, did it?

There was no way he was getting out of this tower alive—not with Tarkin dead, not with those soldiers dead, not with the monstrous security now multiplying in response to the Rebel threat. The vault doors were locked, the turbolift would take him into a nest of his enemies, and—

He was trapped.

There was nowhere to go.

It was over.

For better—no, _for worse_. It was over. The game was up.

Unless. . .

Luke didn't let the thought crystallise into something as painful as hope, but he _did_ stagger over to the vault door itself. Circular, imposing, laced with thick machinery it would take a multitude of keys and computer signals to operate.

Computer signals that would never fire again.

He sobbed, but didn't move from his position. He could sense commotion in the levels below his feet, the pounding of racing troops, turbolifts being summoned.

They were too late.

He was too late.

Everyone was too late.

Unless. . .

This time, he let himself feel that agonising shred of hope something was trying to nudge him with, and a voice trickled into the room.

_Use the Force, Luke. . ._

Luke closed his eyes. "What use would it be?" he croaked. "I'll never get out of this building alive."

_There is a sensor dish at the top of the tower._

And then Luke lifted his gaze.

He was right.

There was a sensor dish at the top of the tower, for transmitting large files. If, with any luck, all systems were connected; if he could get the signal through. . .

Still, he gave a brittle laugh. The turbolift was whirring behind him. "How the _hell_ am I supposed to get there, transmit them, without getting caught?"

This time, he heard Ben's smile. _Use the Force, Luke. . ._

And so he did.

He closed his eyes, stretched out with his feelings, let the cold cloud Palpatine had always wrapped them in fall away and sensed. . .

_Leia_.

Zipping through space like a starbird, eager and hopeful and _reaching for him_. . .

She responded to his tap with a tap of her own: fierce affection, fierce loyalty, fierce _faith_.

Perhaps hope was not the thing he needed, after all.

He clung to that connection, pushing, pushing. . .

And then the machinery on the vault door began to turn.

It kept turning.

And then it swung open.

Luke, breathing deeply, set his shoulders. There was a viewing chamber beyond, with extraction controls and a pane of transparisteel. He strapped his blaster and his lightsaber to his side and set out.

The door locked behind him just as the troopers stormed through from the turbolift; their shots pinged off the sealed door for a moment, then all was a hushed silence.

* * *

When Leia was little, she had sat on Star Destroyers and watched space battles play out beyond the safe distance of the transparisteel. When her father was flying in them, she and Luke would watch his fighter not with any fear or nervousness for him—he was their father; he was invincible—but rather with eagerness and pride: _there's Papa! He's gonna get the Rebel scum!_

Then she grew older, and _they_ got to learn how to fly one of those TIE fighters, and Luke had wheedled their father into letting them fly an X-wing on the simulator as well, to _ensure we understand the enemy's position in combat_. They were both stunning pilots—Luke may be a little better from sheer practise but that was something she would _never _acknowledge—and they both flew as often and as eagerly as they could. They'd even directed space battles from the bridge before, overseeing the Star Destroyer they'd been assigned for that mission, but secretly wishing they could fly with the starfighters to get that exhilarating rush, the satisfaction of each and every kill.

What this all meant, however, was that despite all this theory, this practise and this command experience, Leia had _never actually flown in a space battle before_.

Oh sure, she'd been in dogfights with her brother and father, playing and teasing and merciless, but Scarif was nothing like that.

Scarif was _one hell of a start_.

She barely had time to breathe, ducking and weaving between shots and debris and corpses, icy in the endless cold of space. Artoo shrieked in his socket as she narrowly avoided being torched by the very TIE she obliterated a moment later, and she couldn't resist wasting a half-second to glance down at the Aurebesh translation of what he'd said on her monitor:

YOUR BEHAVIOUR IS CONSIDERED CHARACTERISTIC OF PREVIOUS OWNER(S): SKYWALKER, ANAKIN—

She half-grinned, half-grimaced, glancing away before she could read the rest.

She could sense Wedge just on her left, hugging her side like he would a wingman he'd trained incessantly with. _"You as good as your brother?" _he'd asked the moment she launched from the hangars and announced her role.

There was awe in his voice, and Leia wondered, amused, just how much Luke had decided to show off at Skystrike.

"I like to think of myself as better," she'd shot back, which was a little true, a little untrue, but he'd laughed and then they'd begun.

He shot a fighter off her tail so that she could obliterate the two she was chasing; one careened into the other, like fiery, oddly-shaped dominoes.

Leia spun her fighter around, searching for somewhere else to shoot, raking her senses over the kaleidoscope of green and silver, red and gold, before—

_Luke._

Luke was reaching for her, somewhere on the planet below. A sob stuffed her chest and she smiled, even as her hands did the work in place of her conscious control and shot down three more ships. _Luke. . ._

He felt terrible. Hopeless and lost and afraid. She reached for him, willing him. . . not to give up, to keep fighting, reminding him of _everything still worth fighting for_—

_We are here, you will get out, we will help you, you will succeed, we will get the shield gate down—_

She didn't know if the words got through, but the feeling certainly did. She sensed his resolve, his courage, and she sensed that he sensed her pride.

She turned back to the battle.

* * *

The stormtroopers were banging on the vault door uselessly. Luke ignored them, grabbing at the console in front of the glass. "Project Stardust, Project Stardust, Project Stardust—"

_There_. There was the file name, and there was the rack number. He peered sceptically out at the large cylindrical vaults, the little. . . _cubby holes_ the data tapes were stored in.

"Alright," he murmured. He bit his tongue as he hit a button.

There! A flashing light, indicating the right cubby hole. Luke eyed the handheld extraction technique sceptically—that looked fiddly, and he was running out of time. . .

The stormtroopers' rapping on the door may him lose his focus again. Swearing, the beep of code cylinders and access codes, but of course it didn't open; the necessary machinery was fried. Unless they had the Force, they couldn't do it, and no one here had the Force except him.

And Mara.

_Kriff_.

Luke worked faster.

He pulled his blaster, eyed the transparisteel—it didn't look too thick.

He shot it experimentally; sure enough, it shattered. Fell away to the base of the cylinders, far below.

Very pointedly not looking down, ignoring the pain in his ribs, focusing only on his hands and on his head and on his hope, he jumped.

His feet _slammed_ into two of the cubbies and he grabbed another two with his hands, like some poorly designed monkey-lizard game. He clambered around gracelessly but quickly, to the one with the flashing lights. He reached for it, hand clasping around the handle—and _yanked_.

The force of it nearly ripped him off the side. But he clung on, by the tips of his very fingers, and somehow managed to clip that to his belt too.

And then he climbed.

Going down was to go back to the troopers. Back to the ground. Back to Mara, and treason, and an eventual, painful death.

Going up, to his salvation, towards his _sister_, was the only way he could go.

So he climbed.

And climbed.

And climbed.

* * *

His ribs were _on fire_ by the time he made it onto the roof, but he made it, and looked out onto a sky streaked in smoke and blood.

He'd made it. He'd made it.

There was the sensor dish, looming above his head; there was the control console, the slat for the data tape, the buttons and levers. There was the turbolift, just at his back; that was where he'd have to watch out for troops coming from, when they came.

He had minutes at most.

He didn't dare reach for Leia, but sent her a silent farewell.

This was it.

He strode to the console and jammed the data tape into the slot. He hoped the Rebel ships would accept the transmission. He hoped the transmission would get through the shield gate at all. He hoped Leia would get away and destroy the Death Star; he hoped she would forgive him.

He hoped.

He pressed a few buttons, heart hammering, then made to pull the last switch—

_"Reset antenna alignment."_

What?

_"Reset antenna alignment."_

He grimaced when he processed what it said, and glanced out—out towards the straight walkway to the end of nowhere. To the controls there.

Who, he thought vehemently, the _kriff_ put the antenna alignment controls _all the way out there_?

It didn't matter. He could curse Imperial engineers and architects later, perhaps when he was dead, but otherwise—

He staggered to the bridge, took a deep breath—that. . . was a long drop below him—and then out over it.

Despite being _intimately_ aware of how pressed for time he was, he couldn't bring himself to run. If something went wrong. . .

No, he couldn't bring himself to run.

But he moved as quickly as he could short of that, gripping to the railings on either side like the monkey-lizard who'd been climbing in the vault, trying to steady his breathing. In through his nose, out through his mouth, in through his nose, out through his mouth. . .

Once he got there, the controls were. . . not easy to work, but he was working on instinct and the Force here so he just hit a button without thinking about what he even wanted it to do, flipped a few switches, then listened as the antenna ground into place. He let his shoulders sag.

_"Antenna aligned."_

Then he heard a screech. Anger exploded behind him—

He whipped around; his cry stuck in his throat as he stared at the TIE barrelling at him. He dived behind the controls even as green sparked on either side, the wind and the roar drowning his ears.

Somehow, he still heard the beep of the turbolift and felt even colder: _it was engaged_.

Someone was coming.

He had to move fast.

He ground his teeth, braced himself to run, sensed the TIE curve around for another assault—

And then an X-wing dived out of the sky.

The TIE exploded in a fireball Luke could feel the heat of from here; it seared his lungs, dried the blood and tears on his face. He clung to the console, panting, and watching as the X-wing did a little loop to acknowledge him and zoomed away.

Then he took a trembling step.

And another. And another.

And he stumbled back towards the console.

The turbolift stopped.

He could see the switch he had to pull. All the other buttons were primed, the tape already in the slot, the antenna was aligned.

The turbolift doors slid open: he could sense the troopers inside, hear their shots as they already began firing, sense _Mara_, waiting and simmering and anxious—

He broke out into a run.

Pain lanced up his legs with every pounding step but he was _off_ the bridge now, onto the tower; a stun shot clipped his hand and numbness engulfed it but he _kept running_—

Mara reached out, and he felt her brush over him with the Force—

And then a stun shot soaked into his back and he fell forwards—

And his hand slapped down in one last, desperate attempt. His fingers brushed the console—

And then they slid off it. . . barely a inch short of the switch.

* * *

This is how the Death Star's death throes began: Leia barely dodging the body of a disabled Star Destroyer as it crashed towards Scarif, towards the shield gate, and shattered it to a million shards.

The splinters rained down on the base below. Leia's heart burst as she watched the shield flicker into nonexistence, as she heard the orders snap over the comms, saw the fighters on the surface turn their noses skyward and shoot for the scars.

_"All ships, jump to hyperspace. Repeat: all ships, jump to hyperspace. Repeat: all ships—"_

"We can't go yet!" Leia shouted to no one—her comm wasn't on—save Artoo and empty space. "What about Luke!"

Artoo twittered something sadly, but she didn't bother glancing at the translation as she angled her fighter down, past the rising X-wings, towards—

"Hey!" The ship levelled out and lifted again, the blue and gold curve of the planet vanishing beneath her purview. "We need to get to L— _Artoo_!"

Another twitter—apologetic this time. She slammed at buttons on the console but nothing helped: he'd locked her out.

"What do you think—"

I AM RESPONSIBLE FOR YOU: SKYWALKER, LEIA. PRESERVATION AND PROTECTION OVERRIDES INSTRUCT ME TO FOLLOW ORDER OF NABERRIE, PADMÉ/AMIDALA, PADMÉ.

"She's going to _leave Luke behind_—"

MY PROGRAMMING IS UNAMBIGUOUS.

"Please, you haven't followed your programming in years, you're old and glitchy," she accused. There was an electronic snigger.

They jumped to hyperspace then, and she sobbed: the hole in her chest that had temporarily been filled with Luke's gentle light was sucked empty, like a ship with a hole blown in the side.

Artoo hooted sadly. SKYWALKER, LUKE WILL BE PERFECTLY FUNCTIONAL.

_Functional. _As much as she understood that was the binary word for _fine_, it sent a shudder down her spine.

"Has your glitchy programming allowed you to lie, now?" she asked bitterly.

IT IS NOT AN INCORRECT STATEMENT.

"No, just a half-truth, I guess," she muttered. Luke was still of use to Palpatine, would always be of use to Palpatine—given enough _motivation_—so while _functional_ was technically correct. . .

_Fine_ was not.

FROM AN ALTERNATE HOLOCAM LENS.

Leia laughed at that. She had to. Jedi words in binary was something she'd never thought she'd hear.

She laughed until she cried.

It was an indeterminate length of eternity later that she wiped her eyes, watching the stars streak past. "At least Luke succeeded," she said thickly, "with what he set out to do."

CONFIRMATION: LOGICAL ANALYSIS OF THE TACTICAL RETREAT INDICATES THAT MISSION OBJECTIVE WAS ACHIEVED.

"Yeah." Leia leaned back in her seat and closed her eyes. "He's given us the moon." Tears slipped out from under her lashes. "Now it's our job to destroy it."


	49. Starkiller

His foresight had not warned him of _this_.

The hologram in front of him was of the Sixth Sister, which was concerning enough—if there _had_ to be an emergency report on whatever idiotic thing the boy had done, instead of leaving it for the daily updates, it should still be Tarkin making that. But Tarkin was nowhere to be seen. His captain had taken over, and left the Sixth Sister to make the report.

The hologram in front of him was of her, but all that Emperor Palpatine saw when he listened was that insolent boy's face, bloody and bruised and beaten, as he pictured _every single agony_ he would inflict on him for this.

Vader be damned, he would rip him to shreds. He would electrocute him, unleash the red guards on him a thousand times more, force his father to _actually_ torture him, rip out his tongue, tear his eyes from his sockets, and only once the only voice or sense the boy had was the Force, the dark side that swamped and pervaded everything, would Palpatine finally _put him out of his misery_—

Luke Skywalker would regret the day he spurned the Empire, again.

"You mean to tell me," Palpatine said, deadly soft, "that an eighteen year old boy managed to outsmart my most trusted and vaunted Moff, all the officers on Scarif, yourself, his father, _and me_?"

The Sixth Sister sucked in a breath, shifting where she knelt. Palpatine did not allow her to rise, did not allow her that mercy—not when he had assigned her to _watch him_, and she had _failed_.

"So now the scientist responsible for my greatest weapon has escaped to the Rebellion to spill all the secrets of the _weakness_ he planted in it," Palpatine finished, "and the boy _transmitted the plans to the Rebellion for analysis, with the express purpose of having them destroy it_?"

The Sixth Sister's shoulders shuddered. "Yes, Master."

Palpatine did not speak for several moments, his breaths rasping, tapping his fingernails on the top of his cane for every heartbeat. She stiffed further each time, but he couldn't even take pleasure in _that_.

"There is no doubt that the Rebellion received the plans?" he asked. "That they did not retreat out of a tactical necessity?" Every _t_, _d _and _ck _sound in that sentence was emphasised with a fleck of spittle, hard and harsh.

"The final switch had been engaged, the shield gate had come down, and the machine was showing transmissions by the time we arrived, Master. There is the slightest chance, but it is highly unlikely. The Rebels have the plans."

There was a creak of wood as Palpatine's hands convulsed around the head of his cane.

"I gave you and Tarkin a broken, obedient boy to watch over," he hissed. "You have reared him to a return to treason."

She stammered, "I— I believe, Master, that—"

He raised an eyebrow, damning.

"—that this was his plan all along. To lull us into a false sense of security, so that he could continue his treason right under his noses."

His rage boiled over.

Despite the thousands of parsecs between them, the Sixth Sister collapsed and screamed.

Then the flash passed, and she dragged herself back into genuflection, trembling.

"Are you suggesting that he managed to deceive me?"

_Yes_ was the answer. They both knew that. She stayed silent.

But he did not punish her for it, this time. He just stared at her bowed head, thoughtful, but again he did not see her: he saw the boy's bowed head instead. He saw the boy in the cell, terrified and shattered. He saw him at that function, shaken and resolved. He saw him as he'd interacted with Tarkin, guarded, tense, with all the dislike Palpatine had ensured he cultivated over the years.

He now realised his mistake.

Luke was his father's son, of course. He was impulsive and attached and incendiary. But Palpatine should not think of him that way; he already had a Vader. There was no use for another.

Luke was his mother's son.

And deceiving him right under his nose? Using her own passion and resolve and emotions to achieve her goals with a single-mindedness that had forced the Senate to bow to her will for nine long years? That had Amidala written all over it.

Palpatine had always hated Amidala.

"Bring him here," he decided. "Commandeer the _Sovereign II_ and bring him here." His fingers sparked, and she got the message. "I will chastise him myself."

She bowed her head ever lower. "It will be done, my master."

"But do not fear, child," he crooned, "punishment will still be meted out in the meantime. I hope he and all his inspirations will soon learn the price of opposing me.

"Contact Director Krennic. Inform him that _he_ is in command now, and that if all test runs have proven successful, as he so claims. . ."

He smiled. "I have the perfect target for him."

* * *

_Home One_ had stopped at the rendezvous point to let the individual pilots dock, and Padmé was already feeling less tense now she knew that Leia was on board. A brief glance at security footage from the hangar declared she was arguing with the tech about his rough handling of Artoo as he was removed from the socket; Artoo himself blew an electronic raspberry at the tech the moment he was on the floor and rolled away, hooting at Leia to follow.

Padmé smiled despite herself, feeling a tear clump in the corner of her eye. So much like Artoo and Ana—

She choked, bending down over her desk in her temporary office and scrubbing at her face with her hands. She. . . really needed to think about things, about checking in with the analysts to see if they'd found the exhaust port Erso had mentioned, about going to visit Master Yoda and ensuring he was adapting to life on a Rebel base and ship well, about revising the financial and sentient costs of the fight they'd just entered into on the slim hope that that monstrosity could be destroyed; she'd need to have a report on that ready for the other councillors before they got back to Yavin—

Anything, really, to think about the fact she'd just left her little boy behind again, in a warzone, when he'd just committed highest treason and sacrificed everything to give them a chance.

Anything to avoid thinking about the nightmares she'd been having of him d— of Leia running to—

No.

She shouldn't be thinking about that. She _wouldn't _think about that.

(She'd think about him as a child instead: the grin he always sported brighter than the suns, his constant, clumsy attempts to make everyone happy when he sensed they weren't, the way he'd looked up at her on the second worst day of her life and asked _why are you sad, Mama?_ and she had to explain that she was leaving him and his sister, _no_—)

Her little boy. . .

There was a rap on the door. She jerked up, tears splattering onto the front of her fatigues, but the knock was the rhythm Ahsoka always used to indicate it was her alone, so she relaxed a bit. "Come in." Her voice was tight.

Ahsoka entered gracefully, slyly, shutting the door quickly behind her. "Leia's back safely," she said softly.

Padmé nodded. "I saw."

Ahsoka tried to smile, but there was no joy in her face. "We've got the plans. They've found a weakness."

"I know. And that's good." Padmé folded her hands together neatly on the desk and watched them like she'd never seen them before, gaze caressing the curve of her thumb, the dry skin over her knuckles, her ragged fingernails. Far from the delicate hands of the queen she'd once been.

The silence stretched to the end of the galaxy.

"Whatever poor tidings you bring, Ahsoka," Padmé said tiredly, "just say them."

Ahsoka pinched her lips but said, "I just received word—from Obi-Wan, again. He's reporting on what he managed to learn about Luke, and Palpatine's next steps, but. . . I'm suspicious. There's no way he was watching all of that, he says he finds it too difficult to manifest in dark places, and I don't know who told him this."

"Nevertheless," Padmé said. "What did he say?"

"That Palpatine was furious when he heard about what Luke did, and has ordered him and the _Sovereign II_ back to Coruscant for. . . personal punishment."

The mere thought of it punched the air from Padmé's lungs, sent a fresh flood of tears down her face.

"Public execution?"

"I hope not."

"Yes." Padmé was just whispering to herself, the words barely audible. "I hope not."

Ahsoka shifted where she stood. "It gets worse. Palpatine has also ordered that, in response to the attack, the Death Star be used on its first target."

And then she knew.

Of course she knew.

This was to punish Luke—and also to punish _her_, for corrupting Palpatine's pet demon twins.

"Naboo?" she whispered.

Ahsoka nodded. "Naboo."

Padmé sucked in a breath. Then another breath. Then another breath.

"Then we will alter our heading immediately," she said. "We know the weakness, we know it can be destroyed, and we have pilots. We can destroy it. We can save Naboo."

"And we will," Ahsoka said. "We will. I'll give the order, and we'll be en route within the hour. But Padmé. . ." She came around the desk and knelt in front of her. Padmé was short enough, Ahsoka tall enough, that their gazes were level. "Is there anything you want to talk about? You can't lead if you're falling apart."

Padmé tensed for a moment, then let her shoulders slump. Ahsoka's hands found hers, and rubbed soothing circles on her palms.

"Am I doing the right thing?" she whispered. "All I've done is start a war, get my children raised in darkness, and doomed my homeworld to destruction. After everything I've given up. . . have I just brought pain on everyone associated with me?"

Ahsoka's voice was steady—her Jedi voice, Padmé thought. Except she wasn't a Jedi, and that made it even more soothing.

"Sometimes the right path is hard," she said, "but that does not mean it isn't the right path."

"There _is_ no right path here," Padmé snapped. "Leia—"

"Is an angry, traumatised teenager who lashes out sometimes. She loves you. She's _proud_ of you. She wants to be like you."

Padmé laughed. "Are you sure?"

"I'm sure. Luke too—Luke _is_ a lot like you, and so is Leia. The entire reason Luke defected was because he wanted to look into, to know, his mother. They love you, and I know that this path is hard, Padmé, but things will be worth it soon. I promise."

Padmé smiled. "How is it you always know what to say?"

"Well," Ahsoka said cheerfully, and Padmé was thrown twenty years back in time, to a Togruta girl still shorter than her, a padawan braid and the nickname _Snips_. "When I was a teenager and a young adult, fighting in one war then fighting in another, I had a _very_ good mentor figure to teach me about politics and other areas of life. You might have heard of her?"

Padmé laughed again, but added wistfully, "You had an excellent teacher, too."

"I did. A bit angry sometimes, but he cared. So much." Her smile was pained. "And that why I know that Operation Eclipse will work, too. You shouldn't shelve it."

"The last time I saw Anakin, he tried to kill me."

Ahsoka didn't deny it. "And you still thought there was good in him then, didn't you?"

"I did," Padmé admitted. "I. . . still do."

Ahsoka snorted at her hesitation. "Since when did _Padmé Amidala_ let what _Master Yoda_ said about her own husband cause her to doubt? There's still good in Anakin."

"Then what happened at Malachor?"

Ahsoka pinched her lips. "Anakin could've killed me," she said. "He's powerful, and he's brutal. But he went easy on me, so I managed to escape. There's still good in Anakin; I'm sure of it."

She smiled reassuringly then. "So Luke will be fine. His father _will_ protect him."

"Are you sure?"

"No," Ahsoka admitted. "But I have a feeling."

And then Padmé closed her eyes.

But she was still smiling.

"Far be it," she said wryly, "for a Force user to ignore a _feeling_."

* * *

Leia had barely had the chance to shower and nap before pilots—included the ones who'd been shoehorned in at the last moment, apparently—were being summoned to the hangars again.

The briefing was short and to the point, mostly dominated by unsettled murmuring and shouts of _"Impossible!"_

Impossible to evade those defences, even if they were focused at a larger attack. Impossible to hit _anything _at that speed. Impossible to hit an exhaust port only two metres wide, at a ninety degree angle.

Impossible, Leia thought. They all thought it was impossible.

She smiled wryly.

_And that, I think, is why we fail._

Luke believed she could do it—he would not have compromised his cover to send her this information, otherwise. She had to do this, for him.

So she went to the briefings. Commander Dreis was a curt but thorough commander, and didn't blink at the sudden reshuffling that had landed him with a bunch of recent recruits and techs who'd only ever flown on simulators. Wedge and Biggs were side-eyeing a lot of the new ones warily, and Leia didn't blame them—this was a hell of a mission to start off a career as a fighter pilot—but she kept herself calm. Centred.

They'd trained on the simulators, and had Scarif to forge a quick blade from untested steel. They had to be ready.

"Ready to launch?"

Leia paused at the top of her ladder into her X-wing to grin at Biggs. "As I'll ever be," she said.

"I—" Biggs swallowed. "I just wanted you to know, I saw Luke on Scarif."

Leia froze.

She'd known that Biggs had been one of the pilots on the surface, who'd managed to escape at the end, but. . .

"At the top of the tower, about to transmit the plans. There was a TIE going for him; I didn't realise what they were doing or who they were aiming for until I'd dusted it, and then I looked down and saw him."

Leia's throat was dry. "I see," she said.

"My point is," Biggs continued. "Luke survived then. He's lucky like that. He'll survive now—as long as we blow this battle station out of the sky for him."

Leia smiled.

"Well, we'll certainly do that," she quipped, then clambered into the cockpit.

A whistle greeted her. "You ready, Artoo?"

ALL SYSTEMS PRIMED AND OPERATIONAL.

"Glad to hear it. Let's go."

They launched a mere few moments later, Naboo's sun a distant glow on their left. Leia fell in with her wing mates as they coasted towards the planet from their position on the edges of the system, beyond any planetary scanners.

_"All wings report in. Red Leader, standing by."_

_"Red Two, standing by."_

_"Red Eight, standing by."_

"Red Five, standing by," Leia muttered, her gaze caught by the blue crescent of Naboo lit by the sun at this angle, two of its shadowed moons stark against the stars behind it. That was the planet her mother had come from.

Where _she_ had come from.

That was the planet Palpatine had come from.

Did he not understand the message he would send by destroying his homeworld, the planet he claimed to honour, just because of perceived Rebel activity? The unrest that would follow?

Did he just not care?

Was he just completely and utterly _deranged_—

_"Keep your eyes peeled for that battle station, our intel says it'll be here any minute now."_

They'd revert to realspace and approach slowly. Palpatine's sense for drama—_and_ the sense for drama that whoever was leading it would surely have; no sensible person would lead that thing—would want to savour it, draw it out. Inform the Imperial garrison to stand down, let the Nubian people watch that fourth moon cycle their skies, before. . . everything. . .

There was also the practical concern that if they reverted to realspace within what the plans had declared their _firing range_ they would crash into the planet, of course.

Keeping his precious superweapon intact would be just as important to Palpatine.

_"I see it!"_

Heart in her throat, Leia looked up.

It was a ball at the corner of visible space to the eye—a stray comet, part of a distant asteroid field, perhaps. But the scopes picked up on its uniformity, how it grew larger and larger. . .

Until Leia could see the focusing dish, like the pupil of a glaring eye. It was pointed straight at the idyllic fields of Naboo—no, it was pointed at _Theed_. Beautiful Theed, currently in its night cycle, its inhabitants blissfully unaware of the doom that stared them down.

Leia had family in that city. Grandparents, an aunt and uncle, cousins.

She could almost sense Padmé back on the _Home One_, tense and anxious.

_"Accelerate to attack speed,"_ Dreis ordered. _"Gold Squadron—make the run."_

* * *

It all dissolved into a blur after that.

The TIEs descended like rain; everywhere she spun there was one shooting at her. She yanked hard at the yoke—this way, that way, forwards and backwards, G-forces shredding all feeling in her face and innards. She heaved in a deep breath; Artoo screeched behind her when a shot clipped her wing, sent her spinning out of control before she caught herself, cutting upwards to miss the TIE that shot straight for her. Fire bloomed against the black of space; it disintegrated.

And another.

And another.

"Can you fix it, Artoo!?" Leia shouted back even as she dodged the TIE with a lock on her tail. Left, right, up, left, down, right, up, down, right—

Artoo gave a sceptical beep.

"Are you kid— _I can't shake him_! Wedge, Biggs—"

The crackle of static, grunting through the comms, then the TIE vanished from her scopes. Biggs swooped in to vanquish another one before it could take its place.

"Thanks," she panted, and immediately had to go into a dive to escape yet _another_, they were _everywhere_—

"No problem!"

Static and instinct and sweat, beading at the back of her neck.

She let her senses expand, until the universe was new—she could sense the parts of the ship like they were her own body and they moved as one, a perfect machine despite their unfamiliarity. She could sense her squadron's concentration, the gazes Wedge and Biggs occasionally flicked each other and her, as she did to them. She could sense the thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions, of sleeping beings on Naboo at her feet and the spirits of the stars and the moons at her skull.

She could sense Yoda's approval, klicks away on _Home One_, as she brushed only sweet, crystalline brilliance, and none of the shadows that had defined her for so long.

She could sense the lives blowing out next to the Death Star, and then it was their turn to approach.

_"Red Five, I'm under orders to let you be the one to take the shot,"_ Dreis informed her, and Leia jerked in shock. Who had ordered _that_? Padmé? Ahsoka? Yoda? Did they think only a Force-sensitive could pull off that shot?

. . .well, she thought grimly. Gold Squadron was already half obliterated, its runners dust and shadows. They might well be right.

"Yes, sir," Leia responded, and Wedge and Biggs fell into position around her. "Heading for the Death Star now."

And there it was.

The trench she was aiming for was narrow by space standards, a dangerously thin strip to fly through, but she had one eye on her computer now and it was tracking the precious exhaust port everything they had hinged on. Nine hundred clicks, eight hundred, seven hundred. . .

She jerked to the right suddenly, the Force screaming, and lime bolts flashed past her. Artoo shrieked his indignation.

"Oh, hush."

_"Red Eight, Red Eleven, Red Twelve, get on those turbolasers and turrets and destroy them before they've shot Red Five to hell."_

_"Yessir."_

She rolled to avoid another one, then her squad mates descended and the turrets had a new enemy: the shadows that flocked to their doom.

Leia kept on track. Six hundred, five hundred, four hundred. . .

A TIE shot for them. Wedge blew it to shreds, but not before—

_"Biggs!"_

No reply.

Leia took her eyes from the computer for a single moment to snap, "Biggs!?"

_"I'm here. I'm alright."_

Wedge drawled, _"You are _smoking_."_

_"How kind of you to say—"_

"Get back to the ship, Biggs, you can't do any good here," Leia ordered him, voice falling into the familiar cadence of authority.

_"I can't just l—"_

"You will do more harm than good, to yourself and me, now _stop distracting me_—"

He fell away, and just in the nick of time. Everyone fell back.

Leia switched off her targeting computer. She knew how to use machines—and she knew how to use the metaphysical.

_"Red Five? You switched off your—"_

"I know. I'm all alright." She took a deep breath and then—

_Three, two, one—_

She seized the Force and released her ion torpedoes.

"Go!" she shouted, breath bursting from her lungs— "Go, go, go!"

She knew what happened when kyber exploded. Her long-healed palm twinged, and _thank the Force_ the Death Star hadn't been in firing range yet—

She tilted her nose skyward just as the Death Star _shattered_.

She flew. And flew. And _flew_—

The light was blinding; she had to slam back in her seat, shove her eyes shut and hope Artoo was still guiding her.

Silence. Over the comms, and through the Force—silence where there had been lives, sentient beings, on a battle station built for death.

Then there were shouts.

Laughter.

_Cheers._

Leia slumped back, a brilliant grin on her face as she guided her ship back in. The Death Star— the Death Star was destroyed. Whatever the cost had been, for everyone who'd— for everyone who'd _chosen to pay it_. It was destroyed—_she'd_ destroyed it.

She'd done it.

That monstrosity that had pushed her into the arms of the Rebellion in the first place. . . it was gone.

When she finally looked back, she paused at the sight of it.

It looked like a cloud of shimmering dust, like a glittering nebula, falling like rain.

It looked like Leia had torn down the stars.

She smiled to herself, even as tears pricked her eyes.

"This is for you, Luke," she whispered, then guided her ship home.

* * *

Luke had not been aware of much for a very long time.

All he knew was the cell. It wasn't a familiar cell—there _was_ a familiar cell, somewhere in his memory, but he didn't know what it was. All he knew was the cell, and the desert.

When he slept, it haunted his dreams. Endless expanses of sand, heat, rock. He was lost. He was dying.

He was alone.

But then, an indeterminate amount of time later, a redheaded woman came to stab a shot into his arm and awareness spread from it like liquid wildfire until he flashed bolt upright, shaking, eyes wide.

"Where—"

"Welcome back to Coruscant, Skywalker," Mara snarled, and the tentative truce they'd built was clearly over. "Welcome to where traitors come to die."

"I grew up where Jedi go to die," Luke reminded her, voice rough and almost non-existent. "Threats and reputations are not going to scare me."

She backhanded him across the face. His head lolled; bright, bright blood rolled down his chin, onto the dull grey prisoner's wear they'd dressed him in.

"After what you did," Mara told him, in no uncertain terms, "after what you've given the Rebellion, _you should be scared_."

Luke laughed bitterly. "I have given the Rebellion _nothing_," he spat. "_You stopped me_."

But. . .

She was tense.

_Far_ too tense for if he was simply being reprimanded for attempted treason. Palpatine had surely expected rebellion from him before he submitted truly; if he was _this angry_, and Mara was _this afraid_. . .

He'd been stopped before he'd hit the switch. Hadn't he?

Yes. He remembered slapping the console, the millimetres to go—

"I didn't hit the switch," he muttered, increasingly certain. The Force sang around him, though he was too dazed to reach for its clarity.

"The drugs have addled your brain," Mara snapped, and dragged him from the room. With that, the conversation was over.

But not before realisation dawned on Luke like the sun on a cold winter's day.

* * *

There was no waiting, no hiding, no pause. Luke was marched straight from the _Sovereign II_ to the Emperor, straight through the palace halls, heedless of the stairs. Before they were even in Palpatine's entrance chamber, there were aides ushering them in, faces pinched and sneering.

Palpatine was waiting for him.

He wasn't the only one.

Luke's gaze, of course, was first drawn to his father, standing to the right of the throne, as he always did. His gaze was riveted on Luke, his mask, body, standing unnaturally still.

Luke narrowed his eyes at him, then dragged his gaze to Palpatine. His face was shadowed in his hood when Luke first entered, but then he lowered his cowl so Luke could see the glowing spark of his amber eyes—the naked rage in his face. He knew what this meant.

No pretences. No manipulation. No mercy.

Luke had crossed the line.

Mara dragged him forwards and threw him to his hands and knees before the throne. The stone floor was cold and bruising underneath him. Everything ached.

"Guards," Palpatine ordered, and his voice was an icy breeze, chilling the room. "Leave us."

They left. Mara retreated herself, to stand on Palpatine's left. Three loyal Imperials—one of them _the_ Imperial—all staring at Luke as he struggled to his feet.

The lightning came, as he knew it must, and collapsed forwards again, forehead to the ground.

"Are you kneeling to me again, Luke?"

Luke, perversely, smiled at that. A laugh boiled in his throat.

"Not by choice," he assured him, and shoved himself to his feet again.

He braced himself for the onslaught, but none came. Palpatine seemed content to watch him stagger and tremble, spasms racking his muscles.

He said, "I thought you were repentant, Luke. I thought you'd seen the error of your ways, rejected your sister and the Rebellion, and returned to us."

"Then you were a _fool_," Luke told him. He relished the words. "A greedy, arrogant _fool_—"

The lightning came again and he smacked his head against the floor; for a moment he saw nothing at all, then he saw stars, and then he saw diamond-stars—the design on the ceiling.

"I am not the one about to die."

Luke laughed again.

So this was it, then. He'd known that. But. . .

_I'm sorry, Leia. I'm so sorry._

He was eighteen.

He was not ready to die.

More and more hysterical laughter came—he was unnerving his father, he could tell—and he couldn't stop it. It bubbled out, here, at the end, and there was no force or Force in the stars above or the fathoms below that could stop it. Tears leaked out, too, but they prickled hotly and barely registered.

"The moment Leia senses my death," Luke promised, "_you will be_."

_Leia, I'm sorry. . ._

Palpatine returned his smile. "I'm afraid," he said sweetly, "that that won't be your concern any longer."

He rose from the throne, then, to make the steady approach towards him. Luke looked up, steadying himself on his feet, and stared as he loomed at the top of the dais, lightning in his hands, a portrait in black, gold and blue.

"My Death Star is destroyed," Palpatine whispered. Luke hadn't known that; he couldn't help the satisfied smile that bloomed in response to it. "Tarkin _and_ Krennic are dead, and the main scientist is with the Rebels. It was your sister who pulled the trigger, I have seen that much, but _you_ flipped the switch that gave her the weapon to."

Luke resolutely did not look at anyone else in the room.

"You deceived me. You betrayed my Empire, then betrayed it again when we extended the hand of mercy. You sought nothing but terrorist aims, you followed your own treasonous counsel and caused the deaths of thousands, millions, of loyal citizens. I will not grant you something as foolish as mercy again."

Luke was still grinning, chin raised, like a madman was walking to the executioner's block. Not a boy who'd already lost everything. "I don't expect it."

"Well then," Palpatine smiled one last time, and that smile _hurt_. It was his grandfatherly one, the one he'd bestowed on him _so many times_ when he was young and loving and naive, and it made Luke loathe himself for ever being that stupid.

No.

It made him loathe Palpatine for preying on an innocent little boy in such a way.

"I am glad that we are on the same page."

Blue filled his vision and Luke couldn't hear himself scream but he could _feel it_, as he felt the cold floor at his back and the electricity dancing over his skin, through his veins, scorching his lungs, and—

And yet he _could_ hear it when his father boomed, "_Stop_."

Curiously enough, it stopped.

Luke groaned, face twitching, fingers twitching, but peeled back his eyelids to find his vision eclipsed by his father's mask. The specific tilt of that mask was concerned, tense, and Luke was glad he still knew enough about him to recognise that.

His father knelt beside him, half-facing the Emperor, and he took Luke's hand in his.

"_I_ ordered Luke to see the Death Star destroyed," Vader snarled. "Why do you think I requested to be at Scarif, to oversee the battle? If you are going to punish someone for the fact that he is a skilled and loyal son, _punish me_."

"Father," Luke choked, and perhaps it was the still-raw love in his voice, the remnants of a devotion that had long since been scoured by the light of reality, that convinced Palpatine. He narrowed his eyes. "Father, _don't_—"

"It was me," Vader repeated, rising from the floor, stepping away from Luke, and prowling towards the throne.

He was putting distance between them, Luke realised. He was putting distance between them, _no_—

"You, Lord Vader?" Palpatine asked. "So you finally decided to partake in the Sith's oldest tradition?

"I shouldn't be surprised," he went on, sneering. "I should've been suspicious the moment _your son _supposedly grew a spine. I assume he was acting on your orders? He never did have the intelligence or will power to make his own decisions, rather than following you or his sister around like a dog."

Vader lit his lightsaber. "_Do not_—"

"Father," Luke croaked out. "_Don't_."

"I told your sister, Luke," Palpatine continued with relish. "I'd been having visions of your father's death—_of this moment_. As he approaches, lightsaber in hand, a fight he had no hope of winning." He lifted his hands. Mara was tense now, gaze flickering between the three of them faster than a comm signal. "I suppose here we are."

"Here we are," Vader agreed, and Luke snapped.

"He's _lying_."

Silence.

Vader half-turned back towards Luke, horror painting every inch of him in black and grey light, the red a jagged line of blood in his visage. Luke smiled at him, then at Palpatine.

"He's lying," he repeated, and the truth rang clear. "To save me." He choked. "He had nothing to do with any of this."

Palpatine turned his gaze back to him.

"I see," he said flatly. There was nothing more to say.

Luke didn't look as those blue fronds reached for him again, and the world went dark around him. He turned to look at Vader instead.

And the last thing Luke Skywalker ever saw was the blue and red light playing off the contours of his father's helmet as he turned, hand outstretched, moments and months and years too late.


	50. The Soul's Other Half

Half of _Home One_ seemed to have thronged to the hangars to greet the returning heroes, and Leia had to wait for them to back off before she could get out of her X-wing. Artoo shrieked until a tech came to bring him down too, and once they were both on the ground Leia smiled at the Rebels thronging her—of whom she recognised. . . maybe half—and greeted them with equal excitement.

They let her pass eventually, after she dodged a few dozen invites to celebratory parties, and she made her escape from the hangar, jogging back to her quarters fast enough that she was panting when she got there.

And standing outside her quarters, waiting for her, was Qi'ra.

She smiled when she saw her, a quick, strained expression. "May I come in?" she asked.

Leia nodded.

Qi'ra followed her inside, and took a seat at the end of Leia's bunk. Leia shared a room with Ahsoka on _Home One_, since she didn't have an official role or colleagues to share with, but neither of them dared to sit on Ahsoka's bunk. Leia settled down at the head of her bed, on the pillow.

"I just. . ." Qi'ra smiled. "Wanted to see how you were feeling, after. . . everything. Scarif sounded. . . brutal."

"We won at Scarif," Leia murmured. "And we won on Naboo."

"But _you_ lost."

Leia smirked, a little bitterly. "I'm sure Luke will be fine," she said, the words flat and monotonous. She'd said them to herself far too many times.

Qi'ra returned the smile. "Perhaps," she said. "Have you thought of mounting another rescue?"

"Don't have the resources, don't know where he is, don't have the wider support of the Council." Bureaucracy. For all that they needed it, Leia hated it.

"Luke just got you the _Death Star plans_," Qi'ra said, "and they can't justify _rescuing him_?"

Leia snorted. "Perhaps. We haven't tried in a while."

Qi'ra smiled again, though it was half-sneer. "You should, then. They won't be able to say no."

Huffing out a breath, Leia had to nod. "I'll ask my mother tomorrow. For now. . ."

"You just want to sleep."

"I just want to sleep."

Qi'ra watched her for a moment, and Leia was reminded of how much she'd thought she looked like Padmé, when she'd first met her—the child Padmé deserved to have, rather than someone like Leia.

She'd been wrong. Their faces were completely different.

But when Qi'ra suddenly reached out and hugged her, it was just as comforting as when her mother did.

Leia rested her chin on her shoulder and let a tear slide down her cheek.

"I'll ask them," she whispered, "when we get back to Yavin."

"Yavin?" Qi'ra murmured back. "Is that where we're going?"

Leia frowned. "It's where the Rebel base is, isn't it?"

"Yes," Qi'ra said. "Yes, of course, I—" She shook her head, and squeezed Leia tightly, shaking her head. "For a moment I thought we were going back to Dantooine."

Leia laughed, but there was no humour in it. "We're never going back to Dantooine."

There was a sharp rap on the door.

Leia and Qi'ra sprang apart. Qi'ra's hand, which had been resting on her calf, came up to smooth out her hair. Leia rolled her eyes and called, "It's open. . .?"

When the door hissed open and someone did step in, Qi'ra froze.

It was Solo.

"Han," she said, warily.

A muscle twitched in his jaw when he looked at her. "Qi'ra."

_I betrayed him. . ._

Leia got to her feet very pointedly. "Was there something you wanted to say?"

He scowled at her, this time. "I wanted to talk to you about your brother, and I was told you'd be here."

Leia raised her eyebrows, but her heart started pounding.

"Alright," she said. "Come in."

He came in slowly, side-eyeing Qi'ra the whole way, and she supposed she couldn't blame him. From what Qi'ra had told her, it'd been nine years since she'd left him behind and chosen ambition over love, so conflicted, long-dead emotions suddenly rearing to life couldn't exactly be a comfortable situation for either of them.

Han, unaware of whose bed it was, sat down on Ahsoka's bunk. Qi'ra watched him unblinking.

"What was it you wanted to tell me about my brother?"

His gaze moved back to her.

Then he smiled, and she absolutely hated that smile, how cocky it was, and how easy it was to tell that it was faked.

"Well, sweetheart, I didn't really have anything in mind, but I figured that if _I _had a twin brother who'd been captured by the evil empire I was fighting against, I'd have a few questions for one of his acquaintances for his general welfare and state of mind—"

"You want me to ask you questions?" Leia snapped.

"I thought _you'd_ want to ask me questions, but if you don't—"

"Wait!" she said, panicked, and he stopped in the middle of rising from the seat. She swallowed. "I'm sorry. I do have questions. Qi'ra," she turned to her friend, "do you mind leaving us alone? I don't want. . ._ this_," she gestured between Qi'ra and Han with a wrinkled nose, "to get in the way of this conversation."

Qi'ra laughed a bit at that. "Fair enough," she said. "Han and I can have our. . . _overdue talk_," Han glared at her, but the look softened when she met it with something unreadable, "later."

She got up, and walked out of the room. Han stared after her for a short while, lost in thought.

Leia cleared her throat.

"So," she said tentatively. Her heart hammered at her ribs, her throat was dry, her palms were sweaty. But she met Han's hazel gaze and did not flinch. "How is my brother?"

* * *

The conversation with Han gave her a lot to think about. Luke, with dark circles constantly under his eyes, perpetually walking the line between obedience and insubordination with Tarkin, the line between arguing and commiserating with Jade, between loyalty and outright treason.

_Turning Erso in so he could break him out. . ._

It sounded like him.

That sort of reckless, ridiculous act sounded _exactly_ like him.

But she didn't have much time to dwell on it. Soon enough, they'd returned to Yavin IV, and Leia was hailed as a hero when she arrived there too—she thought she glimpsed Kanan and Ezra, as well as the rest of their crew, at the back of the crowd, and tossed them a smile even as she politely extricated herself from all the congratulations and the thank yous and the grasping hands. It wasn't until she was off the landing pad, into the cool, deep shadows of the Massassi Temple that she sensed a familiar presence approaching, along with a slightly wary one.

She slipped into a side corridor, away from the prying eyes of the hangar or main entrance hall, and let them approach her there. There was a small room with tables and chairs inside, whatever that was meant to be used for; she took a seat at one of them, and waited.

She hadn't seen Jyn since Lah'mu, where she'd fiercely dragged her father onto the ship and, the moment they'd disembarked, dragged him to talk to Saw. Erso had been with the Partisans ever since, and Leia doubted Jyn had left his side—defending him from attacks for being such a vital Imperial, or attention for being so vital to the Rebellion's victory.

She wondered if she'd have to do the same to Luke, when he got here.

If he got here.

"Leia," Jyn said. She seemed. . . softer, around her father, as if some inner tension she'd carried for as long as she'd been alive—as long as she'd been _alone—_had eased. "This is my father, Galen Erso."

Leia dragged her gaze up to look at him.

Her first impression, she thought, was that he looked nothing like her image of a father.

Her image of a father was towering, powerful and protective, easily angered, difficult to calm. She supposed her image of a father was no father at all.

Galen Erso had a kind face worn too-tense, just like his daughter's; folds around his mouth, eyes and nose betrayed just what a strain the last decade and a half had been on him. His eyes were identical to Jyn's in colouring and shape, but softer than Leia had ever seen them before; when she looked at Jyn now, she saw the resemblance. Jyn had the same gentleness that had caused her father to divulge his greatest secret to a bruised and bullied boy—but only when she was around someone who would reciprocate it.

"Leia Skywalker," he said. "Your brother's told me about you."

She didn't expect that to hurt so much.

She turned her head away sharply, eyes hot. She gasped in a few breaths to ease the knot in her chest before she turned back to smile, eyes still glistening, and say, "I heard he turned you in."

"To be fair," Erso said, seating himself down on a chair opposite while his daughter hovered, and smiling in a way that paradoxically seemed to make the lines on his face disappear, "he got me out shortly after."

She laughed wetly. "I—" She grimaced. "I don't suppose you underwent any interrogation in that time?"

"No. Your brother was efficient. Tarkin mocked me for a bit, he stood by stony-faced, then five minutes after they'd left Captain Solo was making me wade through trash."

Leia laughed again, and thought of the palace midden. "My brother and I have a knack for plans like that, I feel. The childish urge to play in the filth."

_Rebel filth_, she thought suddenly, and had to clamp down on a hysterical giggle.

"Well, it worked. I got out, passed on my message, and I hear Luke managed to transmit the plans from Scarif so you could destroy it."

"He did."

"Then thank you." She glanced up at the ferocity in those words, the vehemence, and was surprised at the intensity of his gaze. "Thank you, for ridding us all of my disgusting creation."

"Thank you for planting the kill switch."

"Thank you for triggering it." He let out a breath. "I. . . don't suppose your brother survived?"

She flinched, turning her head away again at that. Worked her throat, and her jaw. "I know he didn't escape," she said quietly, "but I know he didn't die."

Erso had the good grace to grimace.

Leia asked, trying and failing to inject humour into her voice, "Do you reveal fourteen years' worth of treason to every sad-looking teenager who crosses your path, or was Luke an exception?"

He _did_ laugh at that. Leia supposed that when the danger was past, it _was_ kind of funny. Stupidly naive, but funny.

"He was the exception," he confirmed. "He didn't just look sad, he looked—" He cut himself off, glancing at her.

She drawled, "I've spoken to Solo. He looked like death warmed over and jumped and trembled like a leaf in the wind."

". . . yes," he admitted. "He looked terrible, and his nose was bleeding rather heavily, so I couldn't help but. . . well, help, and after that, he just seemed to know exactly what to say."

Leia smiled wistfully. "He's like that," she conceded. Whether it was comforting her after a mind block from removed from her head, interrogating Rebel prisoners to find the truth of an attack that had cost thousands of lives, or managing to make her father calm down when absolutely nothing else could, he could read emotions far more clearly than words, and. . . "He always knew what to say."

Well, no. He didn't always know what to _say_; he was no politician. But he always knew how to comfort.

She didn't even realise she'd used the past tense until Erso gave her a pitying look.

She stood abruptly, scrubbing at her eyes. "Excuse me," she said. "I have someone I need to talk to."

"I understand, Miss Skywalker," Erso said, standing up himself. He offered his hand but she declined it with a smile, still swiping at her eyes.

"Just call me Leia."

"Leia?" he asked. "Luke and Leia. Excellent names, for twins."

"You can thank my mother for that," she said automatically, then made to leave. But the words ran on a loop in her head.

_Luke and Leia._

_Luke and Leia._

She found that there was no day she dreaded more than when that became just _Leia_.

* * *

She'd never found out where Ahsoka's quarters were on Yavin IV, so it took her a while of wandering and sensing her through the Force to find her, and in that time she accidentally made contact with Yoda. He reached back, something in his presence indicating he wanted to talk, but Leia... did _not_ want to. When his presence started moving towards her, she just walked faster.

Ahsoka wasn't in her rooms at all, but in a training room, with racks of lightsabers on the walls. She had a holocron playing as she twisted her lightsabers in her hands, assuming various stances. Leia watched with a slight mesmerisation—she found she now had a great need to learn dual wielding—then stepped in once the holocron finished, and Ahsoka deactivated her lightsabers.

"Leia," she greeted, montrals swinging. "Are you alright?"

"I wanted to talk to you about Luke," she said. Everyone apparently wanted to talk to _her_ about Luke at the moment, but she barely knew those people. Confessing her bone-deep _terror_ for him was not an option, with them.

"I'm—" She swallowed, and made herself say, in the spirit of openness, "I'm _terrified_ for him."

Ahsoka crossed the room in several long strides and wrapped her arms around Leia immediately, trying the murmur something soothing. Instead, she said, "Me too, Leia. Me too."

"He's— _Palpatine_ has him!"

"I know. But I'm sure that in light of recent events, the Council would authorise another rescue mission—"

"He c— he could— he _will _die before we get there, there's _nothing_ we can do—"

"Always in motion, the future is."

Leia stiffened.

When she turned, it was to see her old teacher limping across the floor towards her, casting his gaze around the lightsabers on the walls, the poor adornments Kanan and Ezra had introduced, trying so hard to make it a replica of the Jedi Temple Palpatine had stolen.

Yoda stopped in front of the large paper screen bearing the Jedi symbol on it, staring up with a thoughtful gaze. "Lost, young Skywalker is not."

"You—" Leia choked on her outrage. "You _told me_ he was _gone_! To _abandon him_!"

She jabbed a finger at him. "The only reason he survived _this long_, that we _got the plans at all_, was because Obi-Wan passed messages from him to us, passed _information_ to us, and _you tried to ban him from doing even that_!"

"Wrong, I was," Yoda declared. "About a great many things. And sorry, I am, that suffer for it, your brother shall, because no faith, had I, in his strength and goodness, nor in the word of yourselves or Obi-Wan. Fearful, I was, of losing yet another student to death or darkness should you go too far to save him." He shook his head. "Lead to suffering, fear inevitably does."

Leia. . . had no idea how to take this.

She closed her eyes, and fat tears rolled out. They splashed down her cheeks, off her chin, and sparkled in Yavin's sun's light before they hit the floor, soaking into the dust and the stone. She couldn't bring herself to care.

"I accept your apology," she said hoarsely. There was nothing else she could do, was there? "But it will not save my brother."

"No," Yoda agreed, and turned away from the symbol to give her a mischievous smile. "That, _we_ will do."

Leia stared.

She barely dared to breathe.

"You. . . you want to risk that?"

"Risk it, I did not, and suffer, a good man has, for my foolishness," Yoda said simply. "Old, I am; hope, I do, that forgive me for my faults and oversights, the young can. But capable of change, I still find myself."

Leia still stared.

"What are you saying?" Ahsoka asked, creeping forwards to stare at the grandmaster of the order she'd loved and left.

"The Force, I have consulted, about rescue and hope and opportunity," he said, "and found an opportunity, I have."

He smiled at Leia. Leia found she had to smile back. "Speak with Amidala, shall we, about this rescue?"

* * *

Padmé was in her office—when was she _not_?—dealing with the fallout of the destruction of the Death Star, her face alternating between a smile and a frown with every datapad. When the little entourage of Force users came marching through her door, though, she sat up and took notice.

"Master Yoda!" she said. "A surprise, but a welcome one as always. And Leia," she gave her the broadest smile Leia had ever seen from her. "I didn't get to tell you before, but well done on the Death Star, I'm—"

She cut herself off, swallowing, but Leia knew what she'd been about to say. She could sense it swelling in her like a pink balloon.

Pride.

Her mother was proud of her.

Leia was already highly emotional today. One more tear would not change anything.

"But what can I do for you three?" Padmé asked, fully setting the datapad aside and giving them her undivided attention. Yoda climbed up into the seat opposite her, and no one dared snigger at how his feet did not touch the floor.

"An opportunity to rescue your son, I have found," he announced. "Your permission, we do not need, but appreciated, your help would be."

Padmé stared.

She stared at Yoda. Then Leia and Ahsoka. Then back at Yoda.

Then she grinned. "You want to try to rescue Luke?"

"Rescue Luke, I _will_," he said sternly. "There is no try."

Ahsoka snorted.

Leia grinned as well, and though she didn't know it, it was an _identical_ grin to her mother's.

"Master Yoda says he's seen visions," she said eagerly, stepping forwards, hands dancing in gestures as she tried to enunciate _all_ the hope and desperation and drama twisted up tightly in her chest— "and if we can rally a few people, Qi'ra or Jyn or—"

Pain exploded at the back of her skull. It crackled down every limb; there was a vice around her neck, her chest, her stomach, and all she saw was endless, endless darkness—

"_Leia_!"

She woke to a gimer stick prodding her side and her mother's panicked face hovering above her. There was a green hand on her forehead, a bright touch in her mind.

She was on the floor, she realised.

"Leia?" Padmé repeated, and held out an arm to support her when Leia made to sit up. She leaned against her heavily, head spinning, vision still filled with stars. Yoda harrumphed.

"Pain from her brother, she is feeling," he announced. The spike of dread in the room was tangible.

"Is he. . .?" Padmé barely dared to ask.

Leia choked on it, coughed, and got out, "No. He's alive—definitely alive." She swallowed. "For now."

Then she looked up again. "We need to rescue Luke."

There was no argument from anyone there.

"And we need to do it _fast_."


	51. The Father

**I would like to warn for (as specific as I can get without spoilers) the permanent effects of physical trauma, so if you think that'll be an issue please take care of yourself.**

* * *

Tatooine was a horrible place, full of horrible people, and Vader was no exception.

The Dune Sea, near the homestead that had stolen both his mother and his children, was vast. It was even vaster when one had to traverse it by foot, as Vader was doing now. The sand blew around him, tugging at his cape, but it impeded his respirator only so far as he let his breathing fall shallow in anticipation of the blockage. It didn't actually touch him: he just marched on, and on, and on.

Until that familiar homestead came into view.

Vader hesitated upon faced with approaching it, but continued onwards. There was no life there, he could sense none: had been none for years, even with all the scavengers and Tuskens and Jawas who called these parts home. He wondered if the locals had deemed it cursed, considering the amount of times a shadow with a sword of light had visited this homestead in recent years.

He shouldn't approach.

He could sense no one inside. There was no reason for him to approach, nowhere to return to, nothing for him here at all.

The wind blew and it whispered.

_Was it the desert again?_

He approached. The door down into the pit of the homestead hung open, like a gaping maw.

He shouldn't enter.

He didn't enter.

Instead, he walked around the back, to where the graves lay. There were five.

He paused at the fifth one, wondering. Who—

The wind blew and scoured away the sand, and he knew. Of course he knew.

And then the grave was gone, and there was—just like there'd been that day—a little boy staring up at him with wide blue eyes, exploding with brilliance in the Force—

And then Vader's hand moved, his saber moved, and that little boy lay dead on the ground. The sand shifted around him. He vanished quickly under the shifting dunes of time, until barely a trace was left.

But not before Vader looked one last time, and—

He saw his son, as he'd last seen him. Eyes closed and tense, skin purpled around them, face gaunt and thin and pale. Still as death, and twice as cold, even under the mercilessness of the suns.

Then he was gone.

Vader staggered back, as if released from a trance. The wind whipped itself into oblivion with his sudden burst of _rage_; tsunamis of sand crashed, cascaded around him, all he saw was dancing sheets of gold until—

Nothing.

Nothing but empty dunes, horizon to horizon, sky to sky. Barren, endless. And he felt. . .

Helpless.

Confused.

Lost.

_Was it the desert again?_ he'd asked his twins, again and again, for years and years and years.

It was a ridiculous question. Of course it was the desert.

The desert was where they came from, and that was not something he could leave behind, any more than he could cleave his genetics from Luke and Leia and leave them to be Padmé's alone, innocent and powerless and _safe_.

_Old sins cast long shadows_, Yoda had said to Ahsoka who'd said it to Anakin, once.

"I wasn't strong enough to save you," he said, to no grave in particular, but even if his voice had not boomed, if the sandstorm _had_ stolen all breath he had to breathe, he knew his mother would have heard him. "But I promise. I won't fail again."

The roaring of high winds in his ears was all he heard.

* * *

The dream came often after all of this.

* * *

Vader was the first to reach Luke's side as he collapsed, the _crack_ of his head against the marble floor hideous to hear, blood seeping dark and wet across its polished surface. Palpatine and the Sixth Sister were deadly silent in their satisfaction but Vader made no attempt to conceal a strangled roar that the vocoder could not interpret as he fell to his knees beside his son, searching, searching, searching, searching, searching—

His son lay still as death on the floor. Vader seized his wrists, his shoulders, hauled him into his arms like a sack of flour and hugged him, _cradled him to his chest_, head bent over.

Luke, unconscious, half-dead and so, so still, did not resist.

"Get this scum out of my throne room," Palpatine ordered. Vader _roared_.

"_Medic!_"

_Let_ Palpatine stop him from trying to save Luke. _Let_ him object to Vader even _trying to find out_ if he could be saved. Vader would sever his head from his shoulders if he was dead, would take on all the guards and all the Inquisitors and all the secrets his _master_ had never taught him to wrench his revenge from the unwilling, even if it ended with Vader as still as his son now lay, on a medical stretcher, as medics shuttled him away and Vader kept pace with a desperation that saw the corridor elongating to infinity like something out of a dream.

Then Luke vanished behind those white double doors and Vader was left entrusting his precious life to strangers.

Time seemed to have melted. He didn't know how long it had been that he'd been standing there when he sensed a presence behind him, approaching the medbay. He watched her hesitate in front of the doors, raise a hand to the controls, then turn away before she could press the button to enter.

"_You_," he hissed.

The Sixth Sister stiffened, but didn't back off. "Me," she replied tonelessly. It was odd actually seeing her face without demanding she remove her helmet, and Vader itched to find _something_ wrong with her conduct, just to—

"That should be you," he said.

She smiled at him, a little bitterly, and he realised suddenly that she was limping, her arms clutched around her ribcage.

Perhaps she should go into the medbay after all, but Vader did not want them to waste attention on her while Luke lay dying.

The Sixth Sister had the gall the raise her eyebrow. "Is that so, Lord Vader?"

"_You_ flicked the switch that transmitted the plans to the Rebellion," Vader accused, confident in the knowledge that there was no one around. That the holocams were image only. "He was stunned before he could achieve it, but you used the Force to pull it moments before the troopers reached him and they thought that he had succeeded. _And you allowed them to think that_."

He snarled, "Luke's mental shields are strong, but he and I are _connected_. I saw it in his mind in those last moments clear as day. _You_ are the traitor, and _you_ should be the one suffering."

Her gaze flicked to the medbay doors and stayed there, lingering with something he couldn't name.

"Your son put a considerable amount of effort into his treason. Deceiving his watchers, extracting the information from Erso, killing Tarkin, getting the plans. . ." she mused. "It seems highly disrespectful of you to take all that work and attribute it to someone else."

"_You should have stepped forward_," Vader hissed. "He didn't shift the blame, he took the punishment, _for you_, and you just _stood there_—"

"Yes," she said flatly, but there was _tension_ in this corridor, and it roiled around them fiercely enough that even with his respirator, it was difficult to breathe. "I did."

Then she turned on her heel and walked away.

She didn't look back at the medbay once.

* * *

Luke was still unconscious, the medics told Vader when he was summoned back to his son's side. He had brain damage from the way his head had cracked against the floor like a convor egg, and severe burns and trauma from the lightning itself. He was still unconscious, and he might not wake up.

Vader did not feel the mounting anger, the raging helplessness, the anxious medic clearly expected him to feel. All he felt was numb—the medbay was a blur of white around them, the medics pale-clothed ghosts, and his son was a waning splash of gold beneath the blank sheets. His head was bandaged tightly, hair half-cut away to get at the injury; the sheets were pulled sharply up to his collar bone. Even the shadows under his eyes had lost colour, now.

Luke might die.

_Death_ was an abstract word Vader was far too familiar with the intimate, real consequences of. He had seen childhood friends explode around him when their masters wanted sport. He had seen his mother die in his arms. He had seen thousands of Jedi die, both when he mourned them and when he'd killed them himself. He'd taken Padmé's delicate neck in the powerful rush of the dark side and killed her, nearly dooming his children to the same fate. He had slaughtered societies, cities, civilisations and then when he had found the ones who'd stolen his children from him, he had slaughtered them as well.

He had washed his hands in blood a thousand times over.

So when that word—_die, die, die_—beat against his mind, he knew _exactly_ what it meant.

He knew exactly how much romanticism there was to be had in such a thing, whatever the poets and artists said.

His son might die. He might cease to be, here, in this medbay in a palace on a planet he'd hated, thousands and millions of parsecs away from the sister who shared his soul. He might die, and Vader would have to go back to the apartment—_Padmé's_ apartment—and watch one more ghost wander its rooms. He would never again hear him laugh, never see him cry, never hear the lilt of his voice in anger or teasing or excitement...

Another voice silenced. Another set of curtains closed, the light snuffed out, and only a morbid stillness to herald anyone who went looking for what no longer existed.

Luke was so, so still...

He looked like he'd vanish, the same way Obi-Wan had when he died, leaving a pile of empty rags and the faint imprint of footsteps soon swallowed by the sand.

There was a chair next to the bed, as was typical in private medbays like this. Vader eyed it, then sat down. It creaked ominously under his weight, but held.

A chill ran through the room.

Luke did not shiver—maybe he _could not_ shiver; he didn't know—but. . . Vader reached over to pull that sharply creased sheet up further, right to his chin, to keep him warm. He tucked him in, and remembered. . .

_Was it the desert again?_

And was reminded of years gone by, of a little boy and a little girl frightened by night terrors, of carrying them back to bed, and tucking them in too. Of pale faces turning to him like flowers towards their sun, and pleading for stories to go to sleep to.

To begin with, they had always asked for stories of Padmé, and the mother they had never known.

He had told them stories of his latest Jedi hunt, occasionally of Sith Masters long succumbed to the dust of millennia and legends. He never told them about Padmé.

"I. . . know you, in particular, struggled with understanding your identity, Luke," he said haltingly, reaching for that limp hand. He was momentarily grateful for the limited feeling in his prosthetics: he did not know if his hand was deadly cold, or still held a touch of warmth, and he had the feeling he was better off not knowing. "I never told you about my past, because it was too painful, and because. . . I was ashamed. I wanted you to rise above it.

"But it is _your_ past too, and it is a part of your story."

He was silent for another few rounds of his respirator. The medics had long cleared the room, waiting for whatever specialised treatment they were sending for to deal with Luke's head injury, and it was just him, his son, and the winds that blew outside the window.

"My mother and I were slaves." He swallowed. "Perhaps you remember that much, from the time when you lived in the homestead she did, for several years. But we were slaves of a Toydarian junk dealer on Tatooine, after Gardulla the Hutt lost us betting on the podraces I frequently flew in. And there I stayed until the Jedi found me."

And then he hesitated again, heart clenching like a fist.

But Luke had always wanted to know about his mother. So Vader continued, every inch of him burning like Obi-Wan had pulled his cruel trick on him once more, even as his son did not so much as twitch in acknowledgement:

"When I first met your mother, I thought she was an angel. . ."

* * *

He'd been right. The empty apartment _was_ full of ghosts—and Luke wasn't even dead yet.

Vader barely dared to enter the place—he _hadn't_ entered the place since he'd last faced down his son there, tense and terrified that he'd already broken everything beyond repair.

He hadn't.

Not yet, at least. Not if Luke—

His respirator protested at his sharp inhale of breath.

Not if Luke had been unwilling for Vader to die in his stead.

His son was a fool. He had always known that. He didn't know why he hadn't expected that, _expected_ for the boy to step forwards to save a father who'd handed him to the slaver and stood passive—who'd had the nerve to be surprised when he was enslaved.

Because of him, Luke had been broken; beaten; bruised. But not, he thought, mastered.

Luke and Leia had never taken well to masters.

The pride was a dull-edged thing that still managed to gut him like a fish as he wandered around the apartment. Distant and recent past mingled in an agonising kaleidoscope: there was where Leia had punched the window, there was where Padmé had asked her to hold him and forget about the war, there was the table Luke had permanently scuffed by always planting his boots there, no matter how many times Vader told him to stop. . .

Vader collapsed against pillows that had seen moments where he held his hand to Padmé's belly to feel the baby kick; feet on the carpet he'd swung her around in an embrace on when he returned from the wars, that saw the twins piggybacking and somersaulting and playing at mock lightsaber battles; gaze on the windows they'd all stood staring out of, in so many moments and emotions and circumstances, musing over the same view, the same needle-like buildings scraping the stars.

All connected, all not.

The twins had never known their mother. Not even in stories.

He had done so much wrong.

But sitting there, staring at the remnants of lives that even now seemed to be a hopelessly distant fairy tale, he hoped desperately that the Force would grant him the chance to do something right.

* * *

Luke had spent several days in the medbay by the time Palpatine summoned Vader again to that throne room, and Vader had spent those days avoiding his master. No wonder he wanted to speak to him _'urgently'_.

"Lord Vader," he greeted the moment he entered. "I have not seen much of you of late."

Vader knelt, as he always did, as he always _had to_, and intoned, "I have been busy, my master."

After a moment, Palpatine gestured for him to rise.

"_Busy_," he drawled, "I am sure."

Vader chose not to respond to that. "Master, the most recent orders you sent me, about cooperating with—"

"Grand Admiral Thrawn, yes." Palpatine waved his hand. "These Rebels have evaded us for long enough, and now one of them—_your daughter, I might add_—has destroyed our greatest weapon. I want them _wiped out_. I want this pretender, Amidala, captured and publicly executed for the fraud she is. I want this insurrection that has cost me my heirs, my Death Star and my patience, _crushed to smithereens, and scattered to the four corners of the galaxy._"

He'd leaned forwards, fists clenched around the arms of his throne, as he said that last part, voice lowering to a hiss that seemed to linger on the air long after he'd closed his mouth, dust stirring across the face of an ancient temple. Now he let his shoulders slacken a little bit as he asked, "Why would I not send my two best commanders to deal with the task?"

"I. . . am honoured, my master. Thrawn is a great warrior." But. . .

"You fear for your son."

Vader ground his teeth. _Blast _him, and his understanding of, his _fascination with_, human suffering—especially _Vader's _suffering. Blast him, for always knowing the truth.

He must know that Vader would do anything— would—

His master gave a deep sigh and pushed himself to his feet, hobbling down the steps with his cane to stand one step above Vader. He had to wonder why he bothered with the pretence of weakness; they both knew that he understood his strength intimately.

His suit seemed to malfunction slightly at the mere memory of it. At the time, he'd sworn the twins would never find out—would never experience his wrath, one way or another.

So much for that.

"I understand, Vader, I do," his master cooed. He did not. "He is your son. Of course you would be possessive of him, and I bear you no ill will for trying to spare him his punishment through your lies."

His face hardened. "But he is a _traitor_. I must apologise for the suddenness with which I meted out his sentence, I understand that it did not endear the course of action to you, and I understand why you have ferried him off to get treated despite my attempt at execution. I will not chastise you for that—your son is not meant to die here. Not by my hand, I feel. It would not be fitting."

Palpatine's smile was awful. "But. . ." He curled his fingers around the head of his cane. "What would you have done, Lord Vader, if he had immediately died of his injuries?"

Vader tensed at the mere thought. If Luke had just. . . _died_, there and then. . . if he was _still_ to die. . .

He couldn't even imagine it, now. That emptiness.

He thought he might burn the galaxy to ashes.

But that was not what Palpatine wanted to hear.

"I would accept it, my master," he said, and knew—as he had known for years now—that the man could not detect nearly as many lies as he believed. "I would learn to accept it. He is a traitor," he did not have to fake the way the words clawed at his throat, only the words themselves, "and I will not have a Rebel son. He betrayed me."

Palpatine nodded. "He betrayed you."

Then he smiled. "I'm glad that we can see eye to eye on this, Lord Vader. But the boy is not dead, not yet. So I want you to postpone your cooperation with Thrawn and travel with Luke to Mustafar, to your own medical facilities. I will not continue to waste Palace resources on him, and I feel that if he is to die, it would be fitting for him to die in the castle he spent so much of his childhood in, don't you agree?"

It would be fitting, Vader heard, for him to die where Padmé had, killed by the same man—by his hand, and by his inhumanity.

He heard it loud and clear.

"Yes, Master," he said, and the word was bitter on his tongue. He wanted to scream, he wanted to sob, he wanted to strangle his master and whisk his son far away from here, far away from _everything_, all the Sith, _including him_, and deliver him somewhere he could be safe.

If Luke died, Leia would never see her brother again.

Somehow, that was the most unacceptable thought of all.

"And," he somehow found the courage to say, one last spark of resistance rearing its head, "if he survives?"

Palpatine's faint, sickening smile flattened.

"Then I hope, Lord Vader, that in order to prevent more treason, you can find it in you to do what must be done," he said coldly, "whether by standard methods, or, failing that. . . crueller ones. You know the toll imprisonment on Mustafar can take on those who are not Sith."

Vader knew it. The thought of Luke in those dark, hot dungeons, knees tucked under his chin, hands pressed to his ears to block out voices that weren't there. . .

But the _standard methods_—

—a flash of red, the tear of saber through flesh—

—were not at all acceptable to him either.

"Permanent imprisonment," Palpatine finished, "would certainly not be kind."

And indeed, perhaps the standard would be a mercy in comparison.

No.

_No._

He couldn't do this. What was he even thinking? He'd resolved to never fail Luke again, and—

And—

What was _this_?

But what were his options? He had none.

His gaze slid to his master, watching him with that yellowed gaze.

He had none as dictated by Palpatine.

If he dared to openly defy him, he would have a great many more. Luke could survive, and he could live—_live_, not just slowly go mad in an eternal prison—and he could, perhaps, find some illusion of happiness after all the cruelty the galaxy had shown him, he could—

He could see Leia again.

But Leia was with the Rebels.

And Vader would _not_ do _anything _that would _willingly aid the Rebels_. This. . . _Amidala_. . .

Hatred was a familiar burn. He knew it so well.

He would _not_ ally with a pathetic band of terrorists who lied and stole and killed in the name of a failed government, against all peace and order. He would not help those who had ripped the most precious things in his life from him and ruined _everything_.

But that meant Luke only had those two options, and they were no options at all.

Palpatine smiled. "You may leave, Lord Vader. Make sure the boy is en route to Mustafar by the morning."

Vader left, and had never felt so much like a droid as he did then.

"Yes, Master."

* * *

Mustafar was a hell-landscape. It was nothing Vader wasn't used to, but seeing the medical capsule the droids had Luke in, slowly inching its way across the landing pad, seeing its sleek white curves contrasted with the fire and chaos of the landscape. . . It reminded Vader uncomfortably acutely of a funeral of Naboo, of a look of betrayal on a face painted red by lava light, and he looked away.

_Everything_ he saw since that day, every person or place or possession he laid eyes on, was painted red.

Luke was installed in his quarters, the ones he'd shared with Leia in happier times. The bed had not been changed since he was fourteen or fifteen, when they'd started to live on Coruscant more permanently, but he _still_ looked small in it, vanishing into the heap of sheets. There was a medical droid in the corner of the room at all times, reactivating once every hour to monitor his condition, but whatever the surgeons had done, in the days before his master had given him his ultimatum, Luke stayed asleep.

He stayed asleep, in fact, for three days and four nights.

When he finally woke, it was slowly, heralded by a storm of twitches and groans over twenty four hours in advance, the droid shooting Vader a flurry of messages every time. So many times in one hour, Vader was dragged away from his sparring, his reviewing of reports, his desperate attempts to distract himself from his son's weak presence, only for Luke to have returned to imitating a cold, marble statue, like one of the busts one might find in the major squares on Naboo.

Eventually, he moved his work to Luke's bedside, working from a single datapad as he sat in the nearest chair—the chair he'd used to tell the twins Sith legends and stories of his hunts to get them to sleep, sturdy enough to support his weight. His aide sent the reports through for him to read, but they only came hourly, and his attention wavered; he read the same sentence over and over. He read the same report over and over. _Anything_, he thought, noticing for the first time that the edges of the datapad crackled in his grip, _to distract him—_

Luke groaned.

The datapad fell to the floor and the already-broken corner shattered, sending a web of fine, glowing cracks over the screen.

Luke groaned, shifted. . . and opened his eyes.

Vader sat forwards, tense as a pulled cable. Luke's pale gaze didn't really focus on anything for the longest time, eyelids sliding open and closed again in a sort of bleary wonder at being able to move at all. Luke tilted his head, closed his eyes again as he grimaced, then sat up.

Immediately, Vader's hand sprang out to hold him down. "Don't. Rest."

Luke flinched, blinked some more, face furrowed in a frown. "Father?"

And, despite the situation, despite the darkness and the loss and the terror, something inside Vader rejoiced to hear that word.

He'd thought he would never hear it again.

"Yes," he got out, choked up. "Yes, Luke, it's me. I'm here."

"What..." Luke was carefully avoiding looking at him, staring _everywhere_ but his face, as if he already knew the answer. "What?"

"The Emperor wanted someone to punish for your sister's destruction of the Death Star," Vader told him, naked. . . _pain_, carefulness, in his voice. "And you had recently been revealed as a traitor. I—"

"You— you. . . tried to stop it. . ." Luke said, still not looking at him. He was studiously examining the wall just to the left of Vader's head instead. "Didn't you?"

"I did. You. . ." He swallowed. "You _should not_ have told the truth, Luke, you should have let _me_ take the punishment."

"He. . ." Luke's hand fisted in the sheets. "He would have killed you." He spoke slowly and meticulously, like he was trying to peel two layers of meaning apart from each other. "He would have killed you."

"_Better me than you_."

Luke shook his head, then gasped when that hurt too. "No," he repeated, voice a breath on the wind. "No. He would have killed you."

"I'm sorry, Luke," Vader whispered. He leaned forwards and gently pushed Luke back against the pillows. "Rest. I promise you, he won't hurt you again."

Luke consented to be pushed back, but his eyes stayed open, blinking rarely, glassy as polluted pools. "You tried to stop him."

Vader bowed his head. "I failed."

"You tried to stop him," Luke repeated. He clenched his right fist. "After. . . I. . . I thought—"

"I was _wrong_," Vader said vehemently. "I was wrong, I was a fool, I was a monster and a terrible father. Please, Luke, believe me. I never wanted you to be harmed, and I swear: I will not allow _anyone_ to harm you or your sister again."

"Sister," Luke said. He even smiled slightly. "Leia."

Vader's heart swelled at the sight of it. Luke was. . . clearly slightly delirious, but he was here, he was _alive_, and he loved his sister.

"You will be safe here, Luke," Vader promised, and tried not to think about how it tasted like ashes on his tongue. Palpatine's ultimatum rang in his ears.

_Do what must be done_.

He would do whatever it took to save his son.

He could work the rest out from there.

"I love you," he added.

To his surprise, Luke returned with, "I love you too, Father."

He stiffened.

Stared at his son.

Luke gave a smile. A wry smile, somewhat. He shifted his prosthetic hand, so it lay underneath the covers. "You're my father. I love you."

Vader's chest was sore. He needed to check the functions of his suit, see what was going on there. "You are recovering from severe trauma to your head and torso, young one. Palpatine has given me leave to wait for you to recover, but after that he has made it clear that he wants you either executed, or imprisoned in a cell that would likely drive you mad."

Luke was tense, so he hurried to clarify: "I will accept neither of these options."

Luke's shoulders slackened.

"Despite yours and Leia's. . . _disruptions_, I still have plans in place for our coup—for _our_ time to take over the Empire. If I can implement them correctly, and if you can recover well enough, we may be able to kill Palpatine and remove that threat once and for all."

Luke frowned. "Leia. . ."

"Is with the Rebels. If she wishes to return, she may, but I _will not_ ally with—"

"If we do not ally with the rebels," Luke said idly, "we will both die. It will fail."

Vader snarled, "The _Rebels_—"

"Have been planning," Luke paused to blink, slowly, staring at his hands, "for such a moment for years. My mother—"

"Is _dead_, Luke, I will hear no more of your nonsense."

Luke huffed quietly. "Amidala. . . is our mother."

"_Luke_—"

"If you don't ally with her," Luke said, voice rising unevenly like the stars at night. "You— you will be forced to kill me."

Vader stopped. Vader stared.

"I love you, Father." Luke sounded more level-headed now and Vader could sense him drawing on the Force for focus, for strength, for clarity, even as exhaustion crashed in. "I know you tried to sacrifice yourself for me, at the end, and I would not have made the sacrifice in return if I didn't love you. So _trust_ me: I am telling the truth. She _is_—"

Vader stood abruptly. "Your injuries and the treatments have addled your mind."

"Father—"

"Sleep, Luke. I will return when you wake again—hopefully when your mind, and your judgement, are _clearer_."

The boy had the audacity to _roll his eyes_. At least, try to. He aborted the motion halfway, grimacing.

"Alright," he said quietly, and Vader could hear the strain in his voice. He instantly regretted everything he had ever done. "But. . . you said injuries to the head and torso. What about my eyes?"

Vader blinked. "What about your eyes?"

"I can't see, Father," Luke said. "It's all darkness."

And Vader grew still.

"What?" he asked. Luke's gaze tracked the sound of his voice, but Vader realised suddenly that he hadn't looked him in the eye once in this conversation. "You're _blind_?"

Luke nodded. "There's nothing."

There didn't seem to be anything to say to that.

He needed to consult the med droid. He needed to meditate and ask the Force for guidance. He needed to _think_, not just _feel_, for one moment.

"Go back to sleep," he said. "Perhaps it will be temporary."

He left before he could hear Luke's noise of sceptical acknowledgement.

* * *

Luke was proven right the next day—the med droid confirmed it.

It was not temporary.


	52. Ninth Shadow

**Full disclaimer: I have not read _Thrawn: Alliances_ in nearly two years, and will probably not be rereading it that soon. Most of the references come from my memory and from Wookieepedia.**

* * *

_"Lord Vader."_ Thrawn's head, as blue over the comm as it was in the flesh, bobbed in a respectful nod. _"I am glad you have contacted me. It will be an honour to work with you."_

Vader didn't bother responding to such obvious sycophancy. "I assume you are aware of our orders to collaborate to hunt down the Rebels, then, Grand Admiral," he snapped out. "Good. Take the _Chimaera_ to the Sullust system, as well as the rest of your fleet. I will meet you there with the _Executor_ in three standard days."

_"Of course, Lord Vader,"_ Thrawn replied in that unnervingly calm, steady voice. Vader remembered dealing with him in another life, under another name, and wondered how they had ever got along. _"But may I suggest a minor change to the rendezvous site?"_

This was taking too long. Vader needed to go and talk to Luke.

He ground out, "Why?"

_"The Emperor has kindly provided me with access to information from one of his spies. The spy indicates that the main cell of the Rebellion has made its home on Yavin Four."_

It. . . was plausible, Vader had to admit. But he didn't want to admit it _out loud_.

"Very well," he said instead. "Rendezvous in the Stygeon system instead, and await further orders."

Thrawn tilted his head slightly. _"As you wish, Lord Vader."_

His hologram vanished.

Vader was silent for several moments before he whirled and exited his communications' suite. He needed to plan the offence, he needed to coordinate with Piett, he needed to—

He needed to _not_ step on his eighteen year old son, even if he was sitting right outside the door.

"You're going to Yavin Four?" Luke asked, with all the subtlety of a bantha. Vader was almost proud—and glad, that he felt comfortable enough to ask outright.

Or maybe he just didn't care anymore.

"I am," Vader returned, voice hushed a little. Luke still looked terrible, dark hollows around his eyes, skin pale and clinging to his skull with unnatural thinness. He'd spent the whole time since he'd awoken alternating between resting and healing, letting bacta heal the lightning damage, but apparently nothing could stop his restless son from wandering from time to time.

When he looked up, it was out of habit more than necessity; Luke still didn't know where to look. The medics and med droids had insisted first that nothing was wrong, then that nothing could be done if there was—prosthetics eyes would do no good, especially when the issue was not in the eyes themselves, and everything else they had already tried. There was nothing to be done, even in their day of advanced technology, but Vader still had the overwhelming sense that he should be doing _more_

Luke was quiet for a moment, leaning back against the wall and the floor, one leg bent and kicked up over the over. The little medical droid that had been assigned to accompany him whenever he insisted on leaving his bed beeped beside him. It hovered a few hand spans above the floor, round and pale blue and bubbly, and Vader would have hated it if Luke wasn't so fond of it.

"Am I coming with you?" Luke asked, voice quiet.

"No. You will stay here, and Vaneé and the guards will watch you for now. I will return as soon as I can."

"Can you guarantee that Palpatine won't have me seized and executed while you're gone?"

Vader deflated. "No," he said. "I cannot."

Luke's lips twisted slightly, but he said nothing.

"Luke," Vader said, "I told you, I _will_ succeed in this coup. We will not need to involve the Rebels."

"But we _should_."

"I am being sent to collaborate with Thrawn to hunt down Amidala's main cell and silence them all," he continued as if he hadn't heard. Luke flinched; he debated insisting once more that neither of them had _any ties to that pretender_, but he felt like he might be wasting air. "I intend to find out where he stands on the Emperor and the Empire, and—"

"And if he would support the coup?" Luke scoffed, craning his head back so he could face his father head on. "He's barely loyal to the Empire, and the part of it he _is _loyal to is Palpatine. He won't do it."

"Our support for his prototype TIE Defenders proved very useful in stopping the project from being totally overshadowed by Project Stardust. He owes us a debt—patronage."

"He barely understands Imperial politics, there's a good chance he won't understand what patronage means."

"He will, son. And he will support us. I will make sure of it."

Luke shook his head lightly. "You won't be able to threaten him into complying. He's made of sterner stuff than that."

"Then I will take care of him in another way."

Luke just looked tired.

"Alright, Father," he said. "Play your games."

Vader paused.

"Everything I do," he murmured, "I do it for you."

"I know."

"I need to go now," Vader said carefully—mostly as a means of extricating himself from this painful, terrible conversation, of escaping facing the consequences of how many mistakes he'd made head on. "I must prepare for the fleet to move out tomorrow."

Luke just smiled wryly. "Of course."

"Will you—"

"Emsix will get me back to my room safely," Luke said. Sure enough, when he made to stand up, the little droid was there. Its domed head swivelled on its spherical body to scan Vader up and down, then turn away; he'd never felt so dismissed.

"I'll be fine, Father," Luke added again, a little more gently. "Go."

After much hesitation, Vader went, though he couldn't help the pang of remorse as he did.

* * *

His father left early the next morning. Luke didn't go down to the landing pad to see him leave, but he sat at the window instead, sensing him go as his forehead rested against the cool glass, enjoying the feel of what little weak sunlight filtered through the ash clouds to shine on his face. He sensed his father's heavy gaze track upwards to him. . . then he turned and left, and his shuttle continued beyond atmo, to the waiting _Executor_ above.

When he jumped to hyperspace, it was like an ever-tightening cord snapped, and every muscle in Luke's body went slack.

"He's gone to _Yavin Four_," Luke murmured. "Interesting."

Then he raised his voice. "Ben?" His voice cracked on the name—he hadn't tried to call for him like this in _ages_, and he doubted it would work, surrounded by a dark world like this after all—but he kept at it. "Ben? He's gone to Yavin Four. If the Rebels are there. . ."

Luke swallowed. "Let them know."

"I'll also let them know you're in need of rescuing."

Luke didn't spin round—there was no point; there'd be nothing for him to see there—but he smiled a little, relaxing, at the familiar presence hovering behind him. "Hello, Ben."

"Luke." The presence came closer. "Words cannot describe how sorry I am for how I have failed you."

Luke fidgeted, and pushed himself off his perch on the windowsill. The floor was a little higher than he'd remembered: the landing jarred his knees and his feet went out from under him. His back hit the edge of the sill and a flung a grunt from his throat.

"Luke?"

"I'm fine," he snapped out, then calmed himself. His back ached, but he pushed himself out and staggered forwards. "I'm fine."

Ben hesitated. "There have been instances of Jedi going blind before," he said. "One much more recent."

Luke knew he was talking about Jarrus—his father had mentioned how he'd blinded him on Malachor, a hair too slow to kill him properly.

"I'm not a Jedi," was all he said.

"But are you a Sith?"

Luke paused. . . then shook his head.

"Then some things may translate. Reach out through the Force."

Luke was sceptical, leaning back against the wall, head on the pane of the window, but did so. He shut his eyes out of habit, though it made no difference.

"Now," Ben murmured, "use that feeling to create a map of objects around you. Use that to interact with the world. Trust yourself, and the Force."

"I can't sense inanimate objects."

"You can. You are one of the most powerful Force sensitives to ever live."

"I—" Luke bit his tongue, and just decided to try it.

He was so tired—of everything. But his father was trying to help him, even if he was being stubborn. He'd helped Leia, even if he'd paid the price for it. And now Ben was trying to help him, too.

He might as well try.

Though the Force was choked with darkness here on Mustafar, he touched something clearer, something sweeter, and felt it rush over him like a balm.

Ben registered like a brand amidst the shadows: not the hologram blue he'd always appeared by eye. It was more. . . a lighter blue, like a lightsaber rather than a holo, brighter.

Luke had always seen the Force in colours.

* * *

Ben's method. . . actually helped.

Luke practised it ceaselessly. Focusing on the Force—the _light side _of the Force, he was forced to admit, and when had he started turning to that in his endless, desperate quest to turn away from everything Palpatine represented?—left him feeling lighter and more. . . in control.

Yes. In control.

He really just wanted to feel in control again.

His father had left him access to the training room and. . . most of the castle, actually, since the red guards who'd stalked the halls in his childhood seemed to have mysteriously vanished. No prying eyes of Palpatine's here.

And in that room, he'd told him, he'd left his lightsaber.

Luke did _not_ think Palpatine would approve of his father letting him keep that, of all things. But. . . he appreciated the gesture.

The training room was empty, of course, and Luke walked along the outside of it, fingers trailing the wall. When he reached the rack of lightsabers, he paused briefly, then kept brushing his fingers over them. He was not particularly gifted in psychometry but with every brush over a metallic hilt he _felt_ something: anger, joy, pride, fear, _death_—

He snatched his hand away.

He felt for his lightsaber, familiar from years of proud use; it was at the end of the rack, where it had always lain before his father had corrupted the crystal and gifted it to him. The lightest touch with the Force sent it soaring into his hand with a grace he felt was lacking in _all_ of his other movements, arcing in the air, the kyber crystal like a miniature fire within it—

And then it landed in his palm and he dropped it.

He shuddered.

It— it was cold, it was painful, it was grating, and—

And now that he was listening, Luke could hear the screams above the wind.

He. . . bent down. Picked it up again. Felt that cool clarity he'd so relied on recoil from it, felt it recoil from that, and understood.

"Which Jedi did you belong to," he murmured, "before my father stole and hurt you?"

There was no response. Of course there wasn't.

But. . . Luke had already confronted a lot of difficult truths in the past few months—nearly a year. He was obliged to confront this one, too.

He brushed the crystal with his mind and tried not to wince, summoning that insistent calm that he was fairly sure he'd embraced out of spite, and also because there was something deep in his soul, some connection more brilliant than blood, that told him Leia had walked this path as well. . .

The crystal calmed, and the screams died down.

"I'm sorry," he whispered, "for all the years of abuse, and pain, and fear."

The crystals weren't sentient. He knew that—his father had drummed it into his head, and Luke had always listened to his father.

But he knew that on some level, this crystal was listening to _him_.

"Let me help you now," he said, and thought of Ahsoka's white lightsabers.

And they _were_ white. Perfect, bright white, the same as her Force presence, without the blue or green tinge of the Jedi; the light side in its purest form, perhaps.

Joy.

Selflessness.

Redemption.

"I'm sorry it hurt," he finished. "Will you let me make it stop hurting?"

And when he closed his eyes again to pour everything he'd learnt into it—all his love, all his exhaustion but quiet determination and lack of regret, all his _hope_ that what he did now could atone for what he had been raised to do—its screaming quietened to a hum.

He could no longer see colour with his eyes. But when he lit it again, and activated a single training droid on the easiest setting to see what he could make of his new circumstances—_listening closely, feeling the vibrations in the floor_...

...he knew exactly what his new lightsaber looked like.

* * *

Vader was met the moment he descended the shuttle ramp by a grand admiral in impeccable uniform, who stood half a head taller than his aide and everyone else. That was by far the least notable thing about him, but Vader did not bother lingering on anything else; he was here to get a job done, to establish a military alliance and organise a coup under the guise of serving a despot, so there were only three things important about Thrawn in this moment:

He was clever, obnoxiously so—and he _had_ met Anakin Skywalker and Padmé Amidala in another life, which made him a liability, but—

He was influential within the Empire—he commanded respect, and a fleet, and was _noticed_ if not always _admired_.

And right now, he had the height, the gall and the calmness to look him in the eye and say, "Welcome to the _Chimaera_, Lord Vader. We have been anticipating your visit."

"Spare me the pleasantries," Vader immediately returned. "We have a mission, Grand Admiral, and there is no time to waste when it comes to Rebel scum. I trust you have a briefing room ready as we speak so that we may begin by sharing what we know?"

Thrawn smiled.

"I do admire your bluntness and dedication, Lord Vader," he said, in that unnervingly calm, inflectionless voice. Vader wondered if this was how it felt to deal with _him_; at least Thrawn 's voice was wholly organically produced. "Of course I am prepared. Right this way."

"Good." Vader let him lead the way, but kept pace with him the whole time. "I think you'll find," he said heavily, and watched Thrawn's eyes widen, almost amused, when he picked up on the implications there, "that we have _a great deal_ to discuss."

* * *

The celebrations on Yavin IV were still ongoing in some places, but Han just grimaced at them all. He still hadn't found what's-her-name. Leia.

She'd been muttering about rescuing Luke the last time he'd seen her, and he wanted to know about _that_ because he could admit that he was _very worried about the kid_, amongst worrying about Chewie and. . . _other things_, and—

Well, Chewie would snigger if he saw him now. Getting attached to a band of insane Rebels—to a _wizard-kid_.

A wizard-kid who'd made him crawl in and out of a trash compactor, no less.

But Chewie _would_ be able to snigger at him soon; he had that lady's word on that, and he was pretty sure Rebels were too self-righteous to break their word.

He turned another corner of the base—the statues of whatever gods this temple had been built to worship were _creepy_, leering out from the shadows like that—and came face to face with—

Great.

The _other things_.

"Han," Qi'ra said, smiling warmly at him, but even under all her practised charm he could see her discomfort. It was in the slightly threatening flash of too-many-teeth in that smile; the stiff tilt to her head; her hands, braced against the sides of her thighs instead of lightly placed on her hips or gliding through the air as she spoke, with grace and elegance and poise.

She'd always had that poise, the nerve to look a worm in the eye and smoothly lie, tongue as silver as her faked tears, but he scoffed at it now.

Crimson Dawn had refined the grace of the girl he loved into a weapon, and after. . . everything. . .

He couldn't bring himself to trust that that weapon would not be turned against him.

"Qi'ra," he greeted back, stuffing his hand into his pockets. She managed to wear exactly the same Rebel fatigues everyone else on this blasted base was wearing and still make them look like the furs and capes she'd used to sport, like when he'd come across her in the walk-in cape wardrobe— "It's been a while."

"It has," she said, and her hands moved more naturally then, like her charm had recovered from the shock of seeing him. "Savareen, wasn't it? Something like seven, eight—"

"Nine years ago," he corrected.

"Nine years," she repeated, nodding her head. "Wow. You remember?"

"I think I can count a few dates."

Her smile dropped. "Han. What. . . happened there, you have to understand. Maul would've hunted me down, I had to—"

"I know, I know." He grin-grimaced a little, and half-turned away. "You're a survivor. Beckett said. He was wrong about a lotta things, but not that."

"Like what?" she challenged.

He immediately opened his mouth—then paused. Closed it again.

"The fact that you're still here, on this base," she observed, "tells me you haven't changed so much that deep down you agree with _anything_ Beckett would say, Han. You're still the good—"

He whirled on her. "Listen, Qi'ra, I am _here_," he jabbed a finger in her face, "until that _Lady Amidala_ delivers on her promise and rescues Chewie—apparently the team she's sent to rescue him from Kessel are _experienced _in it—then we're taking the _Falcon_ and _getting out_. I'm not insane enough to hang around Rebels—and I don't know when _you_ dropped all your self-preservation and ambition to do the same."

"The Rebels _rescued me_ from Crimson Dawn and the Empire."

"Like you needed rescuing when you were dead set on getting to the top. I'm surprised you didn't jump at the chance to join the _Empire_ while you were at it—"

"How _dare_ _you_."

He stilled. She took a few breaths to steady herself, anger fading with all the smoothness and grace of _everything else about her_.

"I knew you wouldn't understand, Han," she said—and there was no scorn there, only sorrow, and he _hated_ that. He knew how to deal with scorn; he'd dealt with it his whole life.

Perhaps that was why Qi'ra knew not to use it now.

"What I did would never make sense to you. _I did not need rescuing when you offered it, and you would not have saved me_. But Amidala did, and she _does_ understand what I had to do—what I had to become."

"Amidala is a goody-two-shoes, just like her kids, just like her _cause_."

"I wouldn't call _Leia_ a goody-two-shoes," she quipped. Han had to silently agree with her—about Leia _and _the kid—but would never admit it. "But at least Amidala doesn't hide the fact that she's good, or only _show it_ to judge people who don't meet ridiculous, complicated personal standards of what goodness should be—"

"I—"

"You are only here for Chewie. I know." She smiled again. "How is Chewie? It has, as you said, been eight years—"

"_Nine_."

He _hated_ her smile, like she'd won an argument. "I'm glad you've stayed such close, loyal, _good friends_."

He turned on his heel to march away.

"Leia's in briefing room one," she called after him, "if you want to go and find out about the effort to rescue your other friend. Luke. Who you escaped from a Star Destroyer with a highly desirable prisoner for. I'm sure you're not sticking around just to make sure _he's_ alright, too—"

Han picked up his pace, until her voice was just echoes in the distance.

* * *

"And we're sure Luke is on Mustafar, alone?" Padmé asked Ahsoka. Leia fidgeted in her seat; she could feel both Yoda and her mother's eyes on her.

Old Ben, who'd actually deigned to show up for more than five minutes for once, chimed in, "He certainly is."

"Positive," Ahsoka translated for Padmé. Leia kept shooting the ghost side glances—it was weird to think that her mother just. . . couldn't see him.

"I should also add," Ben said solemnly, "that a spy in your midst has passed on your location to the Empire, and that Vader and Thrawn's combined forces are coming."

For a moment, both Leia and Ahsoka were stunned speechless.

Then Leia said shrilly, "You didn't think to mention that _earlier_!?"

Padmé jerked her head up to stare, glancing between Leia and the

"I am saying it now," he said stubbornly, and Leia wanted to roll her eyes, wanted to _scream_— "Luke has informed me that Vader and Thrawn's combined forces are heading straight for Yavin Four, right now, with the intention of wiping out the Rebel base they know to be there."

Leia said, "_How_ do they know? Did you say there was a spy?"

"Leia—" Ahsoka flattened her lips. "Padmé, Vader and Thrawn know the location of the base and are on their way here. We need to start evacuation procedures _now_."

"But what about the spy!?"

"We can deal with them later, root them out once we have more information and control," Padmé said immediately. Her lips were already a thin line. "For now, we need to move. Leia," she fixed her with her gaze, "take your team and get to Mustafar just as we planned; I'll give Darklighter and Antilles a rendezvous point for after the mission, where you'll be met by ships who'll escort you to our new position."

Leia nodded.

"Ahsoka, the _Ghost_ crew have already left for Kessel to rescue Captain Solo's first mate, correct?"

"No, Padmé, not yet—Solo's going to go with them."

"That's better, then. We'll have the same plan for them. But everyone else. . ."

She stood from her chair.

"Prepare evacuation procedures immediately."

* * *

By the time Vader arrived at Yavin IV, it was empty.

Rebels were like rats. When they fled, they scurried and scattered and scampered until no one could pin them down.

They were too late.

Vader stood at the viewport of the _Executor_, fists clenching with effort of _restraint_. The pathetic tech who'd drawn the short straw of having to report to him what he already knew from the Force—_the Rebels were gone from the planet_—flinched at the screech of metal and clink of glass as his computer buckled before his eyes.

But Vader did not take his eyes off the jungle moon, and nor did he unclench his fists.

The viewport transparisteel didn't splinter. He was in control enough for that. He needed to make sure Thrawn didn't renege on his promise to ally with them—_as the more rational alternative for Imperial rule_—and he needed to stay calm.

But he could sense Leia, here.

He'd come here to ally with Thrawn, to get Palpatine off his back, and also to achieve what Aphra had so woefully failed to do—_he'd come to bring Leia home_.

Her brother needed her.

But she had been here, and now she was gone, and Vader's fury died in his chest.

"Sir," Piett said. Piett was the only one with the nerve to approach him, in this state; even Ozzel cowered. "Incoming transmission from the _Chimaera_."

He'd have to kill Ozzel soon, and promote Piett to admiral. Ozzel was Palpatine's man, and if this plan of his was ever to work. . .

He turned. "I shall take it in my quarters."

"Yes, my lord."

He'd barely entered his private comm suite when he used the Force to flick on the holo, and Thrawn's blue figure materialised.

_"Lord Vader,"_ he greeted. _"It appears that we are too late."_

"Indeed, Grand Admiral," Vader ground out. "We must have a spy in our midst. Who on your ship knew which system we were travelling to?" Because this situation had all been hushed up—though everyone knew they were going to attack some sort of base, and that it was probably Rebels, no one had known which one. And Yavin IV was too perfect a base for Rebels to give it up on the mere suspicion that the Empire was headed their way.

_"Only the most trusted, necessary and loyal, Lord Vader. I assumed it is the same for you?"_

"Yes," he ground out. "We will have to investigate this further."

_"And we will. But for now, should I proceed with the standard protocols for when an empty Rebel base is found?"_

Comb through it for answers, then leave a team behind to study it, while the rest of the military went on their merry way.

"No," Vader found himself saying. "Wait. I will take a contingent of the Five-Oh-First to investigate this myself. Only send your own troops in when I give the order."

It was suspicious. Thrawn would no doubt find him suspicious—and if he didn't, his aide would point out the irregularities.

Vader didn't care. His daughter had been down there.

He was going to ransack the place before anyone else could.

* * *

Yavin IV was deadly, painfully quiet. It was late afternoon for this area of the moon, most of the sky eclipsed by the red curve of Yavin, but Vader saw everything in shades of red anyway. The jungle, the ground, sparked with life vibrant and poisonous—but none of it bothered him.

He followed Leia's trail of sickening _light_, so different from the daughter he'd raised, all over the base. Through the landing pads where ancient flagstones sat scuffed by recent repulsorlifts; into cavernous temple halls where tables, chairs and screens had been abandoned in their haste; right the way to the roof, where he stood there for a while and watched the stars wink in the darkening violet of the early evening sky.

The dorms were obvious to the experienced eye, and he stood in a few bunkrooms in particular: Leia's, which had just the same imprint as her one at home always did, emptied of furniture or not; one that tentatively could be Ahsoka's, especially with the austere, barren nature of the room that was all they'd ever had on expeditions in the Clone Wars; and another. . .

_Amidala _is_ Padmé Amidala—our mother._

No. Luke was delusional. She wouldn't have left him.

She wouldn't have.

In a sudden rage—at _everything this Force-forsaken base and Force-forsaken, empty moon represented to him_—his lightsaber flew to hand and he lit it, carving a deep furrow in the walls.

She wouldn't have. . .

He turned, cape swishing around his heels, and shattered the stones in one of the walls so that Ahsoka's and— and the other room were smashed into one, and he was flooded with memory—

She _wouldn't have_.

But there was a faint tinkle behind him. As he turned the light of his saber caught on something small, and silver, and sharp.

Coated with dust from the wall's collapse, lying right in the corner, there was a handful of hairpins.

He held out his hand and they flew into it like a shower of needle raindrops, bright against the black of his glove.

They were not overtly fancy or ostentatious in the way Nubian regalia so often was. But he recognised this make—Padmé had always favoured them.

_Padmé had always favoured them. . ._

In one of them, short and stubby, was a single strand of dark hair.

If it had not been regulated, his breathing would have stopped.

It was Leia's hair. Surely. Ahsoka had known Padmé, had spent a lot of time with her, or it was entirely possible that some of Padmé's handmaidens had survived to jump to the ridiculous conclusion that the Empire had killed her and joined the Rebellion and met Leia; either one of them could have given her the pins that her mother had always favoured, and Luke and Leia had always been dying to know more about their mother. . .

But Vader tucked the pin and the hair strand into one of the compartments on his belt, careful not to drop it with his large, indelicate fingers, and turned around the give the order for Thrawn to send in his own troops to assess the situation.

* * *

_"My friend,"_ Palpatine greeted as Vader knelt upon his return to the ship, the pins in his belt weighing him down like they were entire planets, not slivers of metal, barely there. _"How goes the operation at Yavin?"_

"There is no one here, Master," he ground out stiffly. His joints ached; he longed to stand, but to rise from his position without Palpatine's blessing would bring on a punishment he knew all too well.

Palpatine's eyes flashed. _"My informant lied to me?"_

"No, Master. They have simply evacuated—we found traces of what they left behind, but have found nothing as of yet that may indicate where they go next."

_"I see."_ Palpatine sat back, his horrifying snarl fading to a sneer of simple disdain. _"Then perhaps we simply have a double agent on our hands. I shall. . . speak to our informant about this, ensure they have not betrayed us."_

"That would be wise, my master."

_"In the meantime, Lord Vader, I would have you continue to work with the Grand Admiral. Despite this setback, I am sure you will make a formidable team."_ He smiled, then. _"But I do have one concern to address with you."_

Vader had a bad feeling about this. "Yes, my master?"

_"While the reliability of my informant remains unclear, one important piece of information they have passed on is that your daughter will be part of a band of _Jedi_," _he sneered the word, _"coming to rescue your son from Mustafar."_

Vader said nothing. The hair on the pin, this knowledge. . . it was all coming at him too fast.

He could feel the fabric of the galaxy shifting around him.

_"Return to Mustafar briefly, my old friend. Take this opportunity to silence the Jedi who have corrupted their young minds and reclaim _both _your children."_ He smiled, far too sweetly. _"I know you have missed them dearly."_

He had.

He _had_.

And he did not need to fake his eagerness as he bowed his head for the last time and bit out a grovelling, "Yes. . . my master."

* * *

He tested the hair on the pin within the next hour, impatience rattling his skull, his remaining bones, like a sandstorm in a junk shop. He compared it to samples of his daughter's DNA he still had access to in his records, from the many, _many_ times both his children had been injured throughout the years.

It was not Leia's hair. The samples were not similar enough.

But the similarities it _did_ show. . . for Luke _and_ Leia. . .

His heart, totally independently from the artificial pacemakers for the first time in _eighteen years_, beat a staccato in his chest.


	53. Shatterpoint Nine

"Coming up on the Mustafar system now," Wedge called from the cockpit, flicking a few systems on the console. Leia glanced between Yoda, eerily calm in the hold, and Ahsoka, lips pressed tightly together, but she shoved herself to her feet and staggered into the cockpit herself.

"Time to come home," she murmured to herself.

"Home?" Biggs asked idly. "This is your home? Not. . ."

_Tatooine?_

_Coruscant?_

_Anywhere else, that isn't a dramatic hellscape?_

She shrugged, and collapsed into one of the chairs in the cockpit to watch the stars still in the sky. "I've had many homes."

Mustafar was vibrant with colour below them, barren of joy. She could sense the life forms that called the hellscape home like one could see distant stars in the sky: the Mustafarians, the lava fleas and eels, the xandanks and darkghasts.

None of them had ever liked the mysterious inhabitants of the large, dark side castle built on the ridge. From what Leia had heard about the bloody early years of her father's residence there, she couldn't blame them.

"The planet doesn't have any Star Destroyers guarding it," Leia murmured before Wedge and Biggs could get too on edge expecting them, "because the castle itself is full of enough members of the Five-Oh-First, with enough weaponry and ships, to defend against most attacks, and also because the main aim is to keep the place a secret. But our intelligence suggests my father is in the Outer Rim cleaning up Yavin, still, so that's one of their major defences down. We just need to keep _off_ their scanners so we can use that blind spot in the security I told you about—do a loop of the planet, and leave the _Star_ in one of the old mining tunnels. The natural resources of dolovite and other metals will confuse their scanners."

"Won't it also confuse _our _scanners?"

"I thought you two were good pilots," she said, amused. Wedge just cursed at her in response.

They made it in, and were soaring over the lava flows in the southern hemisphere within moments. Leia peered down out of the viewport, watching the Mustafarians on their lava fleas watch them, and hoped this wasn't the day they started another attack.

"Here." She pointed to a vast plateau of long-cooled lava up ahead, the gaping maw in the side of one of its mountains. "There's the entrance to the abandoned mining tunnels, they should be empty, and more than large enough for a small ship like the _Star_ to get in. Land there, and hope that no xandanks decide the ship is prey."

Wedge whipped his head round to stare. "_Hope_?"

"Yes!" She smiled a little, enjoying herself. "They used to employ roggwarts to hunt them, to keep the tunnels clear, but I think the last one was taken away to make money arena fighting on Nar Shaddaa or something. Still, it should be fine anyway."

"_Should be_," Biggs muttered, but they steered the ship down and into the darkness.

"A little farther," she said. "A little farther. . ."

They passed a bend in the tunnel, squeezed past a rocky outcrop, then they'd made it.

The cavern they settled in was large, more than large enough to turn or loop in, and they landed on a flat rocky platform that jutted out over a river of lava. Leia peered over the edge, as close as she dared: this close to the thick stench of the dark side nexus, the heat of the lava, the stuffy feeling that came from breathing in too many poisonous fumes. . .

Well, as she'd said. She'd had many homes, and this planet was one of them.

Wedge was staring, pale-faced, at a large skeleton on the opposite ridge. "What's that. . .?"

She squinted. "A darkghast," she said helpfully. "I think Luke killed that one."

"_Great_."

Yoda staggered down the ramp, his expression of utmost disdain, and Leia had to wince. This planet was not for him.

"Mustafar. . ." Ahsoka mused, following him. "I haven't been back here since we rescued those younglings Sidious kidnapped."

Leia decided not to ask.

"Master Yoda, you can stay on the ship if you want," she said uncertainly. The dark side wouldn't be any less thick there, but at least it was away from the fumes. . .? "If you don't want to come—"

"_Want to_, I do not. But I must. So come will I."

She worked her jaw. "Are you sure? This is—" She grimaced. "Mustafar is where Jedi go to die."

He fixed her with a look that made her understand intrinsically just why he'd been a renowned, respected Jedi for over eight hundred years.

"Never die, the Jedi will," he declared. "Now, lead us to the castle, you must."

* * *

Kessel held nothing but awkward memories for Han anyway, and he winced when he watched the _Ghost_ crew approach. Not to brag, but the _Falcon_ could've made this inward trip in a much faster and more direct route, but—

But he guessed he had to deal with it, if he wanted to rescue Chewie.

"So, what's the plan again?" he asked that blue-haired kid—Ezra—as they made it past the last carbonberg.

Ezra grinned. He reminded him of the kid a bit, in the way he looked stupidly excited for a stupid plan. "We're gonna fly in, have a firefight, then fly out with the Wookiees."

Han stared.

He'd always said that he preferred a straight fight to sneaking around but. . . "That's _it_?"

He and Qi'ra and Beckett and Lando and _everyone_ had gone to _all that effort_, all those detailed plans, to steal the coaxium from Kessel before, and these people were just gonna waltz in?

Ezra nodded enthusiastically. "Yep. We've done this before."

"Great." Han grimaced, but didn't have time to complain in more depth: they were in atmo. They were about to start their _charge_. "Just great."

* * *

Luke was training with his repaired lightsaber again when he sensed it.

He barely dared to breathe for a second as he reached out, trembling, towards that little light among the shadows, because. . .

He knew that presence.

Even blind, swamped in darkness, he knew that presence.

His lightsaber fell to the floor and extinguished itself with a clatter. He smiled.

"Leia," he murmured.

* * *

The abandoned mining tunnels rejoined the surface in a rocky outcrop a little way behind one of the back doors of the castle, stuffy air giving way to air more poisonous than not. Everyone covered their mouths and noses with their clothing and, when Leia jogged for the next outcrop, quickly followed.

"So long as you keep to this path with the rocks, and stay off of visual scanners, it's possible to reach that castle door undetected," Leia said once they were all crouched there. (Except Yoda. He didn't need to crouch.)

"And after that?" Ahsoka asked.

Leia shrugged. It was a good thing they'd left the pilots with the ship, she thought fondly; they might've freaked out a little bit. "We're on our own against entire battalions of the best troopers in the Empire."

Ahsoka actually _grinned_ at that. "Poor them."

Strangely enough though, when they started heading in. . . there was no one.

No one.

No one at all.

But Leia could _sense _them. She could sense guards' presences in and around the castle, _conveniently_ missing her carefully planned route every time.

She shouldn't be on edge. She'd _planned_ this route, _carefully_, for a reason. She knew her father wasn't here—she'd cast out her senses several times and he was _gone_—so—

She stopped caring.

She stopped caring about the strange guards, the ease of their break in, whether or not her father was truly absent.

Because when she reached out...

She could sense _him_ now, now that he'd reached out to sense her and lowered the ossified shields around his mind, like the stone doors and walls of Yavin's Massassi Temple grinding open for the first time in centuries. And his light shone in the back of her mind.

Ahsoka and Yoda both lifted their heads when they sensed it too; they exchanged a look, Ahsoka smiling faintly, and if Leia didn't know any better she'd say Yoda was smiling too—

Until she broke out in a run.

"Leia!" Ahsoka hissed, but Leia ignored her. The guards were clearly actively avoiding them, someone was clearly expecting them, but it didn't matter.

It _didn't matter_. Leia's brother was _here_, separated by no more shields and chasms and strife, only by a short distance and onyx walls that had enclosed her childhood in their comforting darkness. The floor pounded under her feet, air stirred through her long plait as it bounced against her back, and she followed that beautiful, beautiful signature until she found—

The training room.

Their old training room, where they'd learnt _everything_ their father had ever taught them. The cavernous space, with mats or padded floor in one half, movable platforms and obstacles stacked neatly in their nooks in the walls above it; the other half with smooth flooring, in front of the tall, ceiling-high windows that looked out onto the lava fields, and lit the rest of the room in a reddish-orange glow.

The lights to the room weren't on, but she could make out the figure easily. Shadowed against that dramatic backdrop, running through all sorts of manoeuvres with a tentative grace, the light from his lightsaber illuminating some of his face.

The _white_ light from his lightsaber.

Her brother was holding a sunbeam in his hands, but it was nothing compared to the brilliance of her smile.

She breathed, "Luke."

He stopped.

And then, without turning around, like he thought by acknowledging her she'd cease to exist, he asked, "Leia?"

And she was running.

He whirled round at the sound of running footsteps, lightsaber clattering to the floor and then she barrelled into him like a proton torpedo and—

She was jerked to the side, like his first response to being tackled was to flip and throw her. But she held on, _he_ held on and whipped her in a spin instead; she laughed out loud as they spun, clinging on tight, and he set her down after a few wild, staggering turns.

"Luke," she breathed, and hugged him tighter, feet planted firmly on the floor, "_Luke_—"

He gasped, or maybe it was a grunt, and tried to push her away. "Leia, your lightsaber is digging into—"

She laughed and leaned away. "_Luke_."

This time, he hugged her. "_Leia_..."

She laughed into his shoulder. "I'm going to kill you," she said, dismayed and unsurprised to feel hot tears dripping from her cheekbones to his collarbone. "I'm going to take your fancy white lightsaber and cut you into tiny little pieces and scatter them to the four corner of the galaxy."

"I feel loved."

"You _should_!" She leaned back and punched him in the chest. Hard. She glared, but she thought the red eyes and the swimming vision and the flushed cheeks and hair in disarray might have retracted from her fearsomeness. "You _should_, and you should feel _so ashamed_! You made me go first!"

"It was a sensible suggestion!"

"Blast you and your _stupid, sensible, self-sacrificing suggestions_, Luke Skywalker! I—" She choked up. "I _missed you_."

He was crying too, she was gratified to see, though of course she'd expected no different: tears dripped from his lashes and ran down to drip from his chin, cheeks glowing with exertion and emotion. His gaze seemed a thousand parsecs away.

"I missed you too," he got out, and seized her hands. "I—"

She squeezed his hand so hard she was sure she heard something groan.

"I missed you so much."

"I know, Luke," she said. _Force_, he spent so much time holding it together for her in the wake of bad news, helping her through her anger, seeing him crack— "I _know_. I— I wish we could've rescued you sooner, I wish—"

"I know."

She quietened.

They both knew.

There wasn't anything she needed to say.

After so long alone. . . now she remembered how she'd never needed to explain anything to him. Except mathematics.

"I heard you destroyed the Death Star," he murmured, running his thumb along the back of her hand.

"Only after _you_ sent us the plans," she shot back. "And— and then you were _gone_, the game was up. What happened!?"

She turned her face towards him like a leaf towards the sun, staring. Her brother said nothing.

"Luke, look at me."

He did. His gaze shifted over her hair, flickering.

"Look me in the _eye_."

He sighed.

"Leia," he said. "I'm blind."

She stared at him.

"What?"

He knew what she meant, and didn't repeat what he'd said; just let her process it all, let her raise their entwined hands to brush her thumb against his cheek, impossibly tender.

"What?" she whispered, and this time he answered.

"I hit my head," he said wryly and simply, with a small quirk of the mouth.

"_What_?"

He tightened his hold on her hands and lowered them again. "Leia."

"_Who_? What happened? Did— did Vader—"

Luke winced. "Father—"

"_He_ did this?"

"No, Leia—"

"I'm glad to see you well, Luke."

Instinct had Luke jerking back, summoning his saber to hand and lighting it against the threat, but after a moment he relaxed. The blade collapsed back into the hilt.

Ahsoka smiled. "Nice lightsaber."

"Apparently I borrowed ideas from the best," he quipped, then glanced at Leia. "It's. . ."

"White," she supplied. He nodded like that made sense—like he hadn't known. "So you made it _after_—"

She broke herself off when she saw Luke's brow furrow, his head turn slightly. . . and Leia rolled her eyes. The _tap-tap-tap_ of Yoda's gimer stick was _far_ too loud.

"Who—"

"Master Yoda, I am, young Skywalker," he introduced solemnly. "Regretful, I am, that my actions to your task being harder led. Try, I will, to rectify my grave error."

Luke grimaced. He already had a headache; she could sense it.

"It's nice to—"

"_Master Yoda_," a far-too-familiar voice hissed. Leia jumped out of her skin, automatically shifting in front of her brother, and _glaring_. "I am less than pleased to learn that you survived."

Yoda inclined his head to the monster in the doorway. "Nuisances, old friends can be, hmm, Vader?"

"You—"

"_You_," Leia spat, marching forwards. Her father dropped the ironclad grip he'd held on his Force presence since they landed and suddenly it was unthinkable that they _wouldn't_ sense him: his presence was everywhere; thick, dark, choking. "You're meant to still be at _Yavin_."

"And it is wonderful to see you too," he drawled right back, "daughter."

* * *

It had worked.

Those Rebels' terrible, ridiculous plan had _worked_, and now Han was watching the loading ramp to the _Ghost_ rise on a hold full of Wookiees, leaning against the railing above the ladder down, searching, searching—

The _Ghost_ listed to the side suddenly as they came under a barrage of fire; he seized the railing as he was flung forwards, but moments later he felt the familiar hum of hyperspace engines underneath him and he sighed, straightening up again—

To hear a familiar roar.

His head jerked up, seeking that one head in a sea of Wookiees. There was nothing. . .

Until a massive furry paw, right under his nose, seized him by the front of his shirt and dragged him over the railing.

"Chewie!"

His grunts were pointed. _You have weathered the thunderstorm poorly, cub._

"Hey, hey, not my fault I look a little scruffy." He scrunched his nose and ran a scornful eye over Chewie's scruffy fur, matted with blood, scabs and dirt. "You ain't looking so good yourself, pal."

_I bear the marks of battle. You bear the marks of a cub who has not been groomed or bathed for plentiful rotations._

Han scoffed a laugh. "I missed you too, pal," he said, letting himself be pulled in when Chewie tilted his head, groaned, and placed his hands on his head and shoulders. "I missed you too."

Then, voice muffled, he said, "You won't _believe_ some of the shavit I've put up with to get here."

* * *

Luke's left hand was tightly clasped in Leia's right, and the fine wroshyr-wood table edge dug into his forearm as they sat next to each other, Luke automatically scooting his chair closer to her so their shoulders pressed together. Warmth bled from her upper arm to his; he leaned into it, she put her head on his shoulder and he put his head on hers, for a tender moment, before she straightened again, all business.

He could not see the glare she levelled at their father as he towered, standing, on the other side of the dining table they always used, but he could well imagine it. "So? We're here. We're listening. What do you have to say for yourself?"

He could hear Yoda and Ahsoka on his respective left and right, shifting in their seats, and he frowned slightly.

"I," Vader announced, ignoring Leia's fury, "would like to open negotiations for an alliance with the Rebellion."

Luke choked on his tongue.

Leia's other hand rested itself on his shoulder, and he didn't shake it off when he took a breath, laughing slightly, and asked, "_Now_ you want to? What happened since _I_ asked you?"

Leia's hand slipped down his arm and squeezed it. She still glared at Vader, though. "Why?"

His father took a few breaths before he said, "I. . . have come to a realisation."

"It's about time. Care to enlighten us to what it is?"

"Leia," Luke admonished.

"_What_?"

"I cannot explain my reasoning and proposals if you do not listen, little one."

"_I don't trust you, Father, and I don't want to listen at_—"

"Leia," Luke murmured, turning his head in her direction, "_please_." _He's trying._

_He let you go _blind_, he handed you over to be _tortured_, he stood by and did _nothing_—_

_Trust me, I know. But he is trying, and I don't want to hate our father forever._

She sighed. Then he felt a light touch on his shoulder again and let her lean her forehead there for a second, before she leaned back again, kissed him on the cheek, and turned back to Vader.

"Alright," she said, and no one was surprised at her sudden change of heart. "We thought you were in the Outer Rim. Let's start with an explanation of that."

His father said stiffly, "I. . . had been ordered to Yavin IV by Palpatine to cooperate with Thrawn on stamping out the main Rebel base. I left Luke here, under the watchful eyes of the Five-Oh-First, and used the intelligence Palpatine had apparently obtained from a mole in the Rebellion to launch our attack."

Leia stiffened for whatever reason, and Luke brushed her arm with his thumb to reassure her.

Vader continued, "Of course, when I arrived, you had already heard about the attack somehow and evacuated. But when I was inspecting the base you'd left behind, I found. . . some silver pins, some hair on them. . ."

Leia didn't have any reaction to that, but Luke heard Ahsoka murmur, "_Oh_."

"I. . . tested the hair," Vader said. "Against the DNA samples I have for you two."

Luke's mouth dropped into the O-gape of realisation.

He could feel his father's gaze on him.

"I believe you," he said, "when you say your mother is alive. That— that she's been working against the Empire for years."

Leia snorted. "If you only believed him after physical DNA evidence then that's not belief, that's refusing to be even more of a—"

"_Leia_."

Leia turned on him, ready to hiss. . . then deflated. "Let me shout at him."

"Later."

"I'm here _now_, so we should do it—"

"When we don't have limited time and the ideal opportunity to discuss coups and revolutions, yes, I agree."

He could feel her glare. "I hate you."

"Love you too."

Ahsoka cleared her throat. That new Jedi—Yoda, Leia had called him, and Luke was pretty sure he'd heard his father describing him as a stupid, evil frog when he was young—made a sort of giggling noise.

Vader's ire rose. Luke restrained the urge to smile.

Leia turned back to the others unapologetically; just looked at her father and said, "Well?"

"Well," he continued, still side-eyeing Yoda. Luke didn't need to see him to know that; he'd never been able to see his gaze. "I. . . had already discussed and agreed with Thrawn where he would stand, and what he would gain from it, were I to depose of Palpatine and hand the Empire to someone more capable. Having now discovered your mother's survival, my resolve to do so was even stronger. So, when the mole sent word that you were coming to rescue Luke, Thrawn agreed to spread word of my continued presence on the _Chimaera_ and I returned here to. . . welcome you."

Luke almost laughed at that last phrase.

"You'd just discovered that your late, beloved wife," Leia said, "was _alive_, and fighting to eliminate an empire you served, and your response was to just _hand it to someone else_?"

"My response was to hand it to _you_, Leia."

She froze.

"You have been trained to be Empress. You could take power and mould the galaxy into what you want it to be."

She shook her head. "No one person should wield that much power."

"Then you can lay it down yourself once you have done with the Empire what you wish, and rest assured that no one else ever will."

Leia narrowed her eyes. "And you'd _let_ me disband the Empire you worked so hard to build? Allow me to convert it back to a Republic full of corruption and inefficiency and bureaucracy?"

Her father just drawled, "I am glad to see you are self-aware."

Ahsoka actually snorted at that. Yoda didn't seem able to keep quiet, saying in that painfully mangled speech pattern of his, "Hypocritical, do not be, Vader."

The contrast of their father talking to them and talking to the others was stark. He immediately hissed, "Do _not_ presume to belittle me again, _Master_—"

"_Father_," Leia snapped. "Stay calm." She shot Luke a wry look. "We are not here to argue."

He stopped. Luke could still tense his intense _hatred_ of the newcomer, as well as Yoda's endless amusement—and. . . sadness?—at it all, but Vader said nothing.

"Anyway," he continued through gritted teeth. "That is my proposal: that we cooperate for the shared aim of seeing Palpatine dead, then I will hand all authority over to you."

"Over to the Rebellion?"

"Over to _you_, and no other."

Luke was pretty sure Leia rolled her eyes.

But Luke himself asked, baldly, "Why?"

He needed to hear it. His father needed to _say it_.

A pause.

"Why? Why are you willing to give up everything you've worked for since I was born?"

More pauses, and hisses of breaths. In, out; in, out; in, out.

Then Vader said, "I would rather have a Rebel son than a dead one."

Then, to Leia: "The same goes for my daughter."

And finally, much more quietly: "And my wife."

Then he raised his voice again. "To do so, I am aware will require further negotiations with Rebel High Command, and. . ." His breathing stuttered. ". . .Padmé, but until then I can offer military intervention and assistance when required, my own sword and skills, numerous officers and troopers and pilots handpicked to serve me in any coup, and whatever intelligence I can come up with."

Ahsoka didn't flinch. "Then tell us who the spy is."

"I do not know who the spy is," he answered promptly—if a little resentfully, the words specifically directed towards Luke and Leia. "But it is something I shall certainly endeavour to find out, and if not, Ahsoka, I can still provide you now will all the information _I_ know of, which the spy has transmitted. That may help you narrow it down."

Ahsoka was silent, but she was probably nodding, from her sense in the Force. "It would," she said. "Fire away."

And as he began to rattle off all sorts of intelligence, from locations and ships to missions and personnel, Luke rested his head against Leia's shoulder.

_There's hope, then_, he said.

Leia rested her cheek on his hair in return. _There's always hope. What's there hope for this time?_

And, smiling into the tough fabric of her fatigues, Luke said, _The success of Operation Eclipse_.


	54. The Family, Revisited

Luke gripped Leia's hand tightly as they meandered through the volcanic caverns, the heat of the lava splashing several platforms below them scalding his face. He could well remember the tunnel, and tried to imagine the twists and turns, the sharp, blackish rock and the odd shadows that came when a river of magma was the only light source. He had limited success.

A loose rock went out beneath him and Leia caught him before he even had the chance to trip, foot frozen in midair. Luke tried resolutely not to think about the fact that he was perhaps a metre or two from the edge.

"Talk to me," he said when they continued on. "What've I missed?"

He could practically _hear_ the way her lips pursed in disapproval, but she conceded to say, "Nothing much. We carried out a few failed rescue attempts. I made a few friends. Blew up a factory. Blew up a Death Star." He chuckled, as she'd intended. "Nothing out of the ordinary."

"Tell me about your new friends," Luke said as they took a right, and the platform widened so it was wide enough to easily walk four abreast. Something in his shoulders slackened.

"Well," she snorted, "you've already met a few of them."

"Have I?"

"Yes. And they have a _few_ questions about Skystrike that I've been graciously avoiding answering, to give you the chance to explain yourself."

Luke groaned. "How generous of you."

"I know. Biggs and Wedge were the pilots who flew us here, in fact, and will be the ones flying us back."

"_Great_." He laughed, though, to soften it. "I liked them."

"I know. You committed treason for them."

"It wasn't _just_ for them."

She huffed out a laugh herself. "Fine, then," she said. "I heard you made some friends yourself, during your. . . adventure."

Luke both grinned and grimaced at that way of putting it. "I hope you've already met Han, otherwise a lot of things went wrong."

"Oh, I met him."

He knew that tone. "Not impressed?"

"He's apparently my new friend's ex, and to be honest I can see why she decided to leave him."

Luke snorted. Felt guilty about his mirth a moment later—he _did_ like Han, a lot—but didn't take it back. "May I hear about this other new friend of yours?"

"Only if you finish telling me about your friends."

Luke rolled his eyes. "There was Mara, I suppose. From a certain point of view."

"Mara. . .?" Leia asked, then winced and smacked the back of his head. "_Luke_!"

"What?"

"Do you not have enough self-preservation to _not involve yourself with Inquisitors_—"

"Hey, hey, not my fault she was assigned to be my watcher when Palpatine finally decided to let me out of that cell. But that's not the point. I made other friends. . ." He trailed off.

Leia said, "I'm surprised you managed to make _two_ friends in captivity, if you're gonna tell me you made a few dozen more—"

"Horada," he said suddenly. "What happened to her?"

"Horada? The librarian?" Leia guided him up over a stone. "She came to Dantooine while we were there—"

"So you _were_ there."

"—yes, now shush, and Horada reported the failure of the rescue attempt to us. I didn't see her around after that."

"She went back to Alderaan," Ahsoka called from behind them. Luke jerked at the reminder that he and Leia weren't alone, wrapped up in each other as they were. "She had family there."

"I know." Luke smiled. "I'm glad she made it back safe."

_They_ made it back safe to the ship alright, and Luke couldn't help but grin when he heard a shout from the cockpit:

"We weren't eaten by xandanks!"

Leia shot back, "Glad to hear it!"

"But Biggs is getting really antsy so I would _request_," Wedge continued, feet sounding loudly as he jogged down the ramp, "that we get out of here as soon as possible, before any _do_ come along."

Leia snorted. "Alright."

"So. Did you find—"

He froze. Luke felt his gaze on him.

Luke still gripped Leia tightly with his left hand, but he lifted his right in an awkward wave. "Hi. Remember me?"

"You—" Wedge started again. "Yes, I remember you. You nearly got us killed and then you saved our lives."

"It was my first act of treason." Luke tried to keep his tone an upbeat drawl, tried to keep humour in his shrug, and mostly succeeded. But he didn't fail to notice that Wedge didn't mention Rake. "Apologies if it wasn't the. . . _smoothest_."

Wedge scoffed a laugh. "Alright. Get on board, and we're out of here." Then he glanced up again, looking not at Luke, but at something farther away, and said, "I. . . heard you also killed _that_ thing, as well." His gaze ran along the lightsaber at Luke's belt.

Luke frowned, turned in the direction of that feeling Wedge was responding to and stretching out with the Force to brush over death, decay, old bones. . .

Leia beat him to the understanding. "A darkghast skeleton. We found it when we were twelve; you left me dangling over the lava stream so I wouldn't get in the way when _you_ killed it."

"_That is a blatant lie_," Luke shot back. "I _saved_ you from that, first, but _you_ were lying on the ground wounded because you'd somehow forgotten about its _claws_ when you tried to storm at it yourself. And then _I _got injured in my—successful!—attempt to kill it before it decided you looked like a tasty, docile snack."

"_Docile_?"

"_I still have the scar_, Leia."

They met each other's gazes belligerently, eyebrows raised. After a moment, Leia huffed and stormed up the ramp without him. "I did _not_ miss this."

"You _did_," he called after her.

She scoffed. But she waited for him at the top of the ramp and took his arm again, grinning.

"Let's go then," she called, still smiling slightly. Luke sensed the two pilots freeze in shock when they saw that smile, and wondered how much she'd smiled in the last few months. "Stop gawking, and make yourselves useful."

"Yes, ma'am," Biggs joked, and Luke rolled his eyes.

He had missed his sister so much.

* * *

_Humans so often go seeking spiders and end fighting webweavers,_ Chewie teased when Han had finished his tale, sitting in their little spot in the corner of the hold. A Wookiee's arm made a comfortable pillow.

Han snorted at the idiom, though the concept of a bug as large as a webweaver never failed to unnerve him. "I wouldn't call _Luke_ a _webweaver_. He tried to act tough, 'cause people never went easy on him, but I'd be surprised if he ever even killed someone in his life."

Alright, no he wouldn't. But the sentiment remained.

Chewie groaned and patted him on the shoulder. _You have found a brother, then._

"What— hey! No, _I'm_ not—"

Chewie sniggered, and he gave up. "Fine. But I wouldn't call him tough. _Yeah_, I wandered into a little more trouble than I bargained for, galactic wars and all that—"

_You mistook the stars for flame beetles._

"Al_right_, stop insulting me with fancy idioms—and isn't that saying usually the other way round?—anyway, he's a good kid, helped me out, is about to be rescued, whoop de doo. We're heading back to the Rebel flagship now, and then they'll throw us on the _Falcon_ and we'll be on our merry way."

Chewie tilted his head to the side. _Should I not meet this brother of yours? I owe a debt for his assistance in my rescue._

"What," Han asked, "are you suggesting?"

Chewie just looked at him.

"_No_, we are _not_ hanging around!"

_Does the cub have people?_

There was a confusing moment in which Han worked out that it was not _him_ Chewie was calling _cub_, this time. "Yes he does, his _mother_ runs the karking rebellion he's headed to. His father's. . . I don't know, I think he's some high up Imp, they don't seem to get along—"

_Then we should step in to fill the absence._

"We are _not_ hanging around. They're suicidal Rebels, they—"

He cut himself off. Everyone around him—all the Wookiees and their younglings, and also that Lasat and the Mandalorian—were staring at him.

"Oh, mind your own business," he snapped, then lowered his voice. "And it's _true_! And the kid doesn't need any more family, he's got enough people stepping in to do the job, from what I've seen. That sister of his. . ."

Chewie insisted, _There is always room for another clan member._

Han frowned, but struggled to hold it.

Chewie nudged him again. _I want to meet him. Do you not want to see how the rotations have treated him?_

Han sighed. "Alright, we'll stay," he conceded. "But _only_ because—"

He cut himself off. Chewie was smiling at him in that I'm-two-centuries-old-and-I-know-more-about-you-than-you-do kind of way.

"Alright," he said. "You'll get to meet the kid."

* * *

"Lord Vader," Thrawn greeted the moment Vader disembarked the shuttle into the hangar of the _Chimaera_. There was no pompous greeting party: just Thrawn, his aide—Vanto?—and a few escort stormtroopers. Vader was impressed. "I trust your trip was successful?"

"It was," Vader confirmed, barely slowing down as he passed them, letting _them_ fall into step with _him._

"Well then," Thrawn said, red eyes sparking, "I suppose we will have much to discuss, then."

* * *

"I have extended the offer of a temporary military alliance with the main cell of the Rebellion," Vader reported, "and given them a frequency with which to contact me. I expect them to use it within one standard week."

"You are certain you know your children well enough to confirm that?"

"I know—" Actually, come to think of it, Vader didn't want to think about Padmé. Didn't want to think about _anything about_ Padmé. Even her punctuality, even her work ethic, her efficiency— "I know them well enough, yes."

Thrawn's eyes were narrowed, but Vader dared him to call his bluff.

He did not. "Good. Though, Lord Vader, I must ask you what my men and my people will gain if the Empire is handed over to Rebels. This is a part of your plan that was not negotiated in your deal."

Vader ground his teeth. "You remember the Republic's method of dealing with the Unknown Regions, I am sure. Ineffective, bureaucratic and toothless as it was, it was far less expansionist than Imperial ones. Palpatine wants domination of the galaxy, Grand Admiral, and he will settle for nothing less."

"And the threats in the Unknown Regions I have always warned of?" Thrawn pushed. "Will the Rebellion deal with _those_ the way the Emperor has promised to?"

"Be careful what you say, Chiss," Vader hissed. "Any Empire helmed by my daughter would _never_ roll over in the face of an invasion the way you seem to think it would. She would fight, and she would _win_."

Thrawn said, "I suppose she takes after her father, then?"

Vader said nothing.

It didn't matter: Thrawn continued.

"It's. . . most intriguing, Lord Vader," he mused, gaze fixed on the holoprojector in the briefing room, which showed a section of the galaxy Vader was not familiar with. Somewhere near wherever this _threat_ originated from, no doubt. "You are correct: I _did_ see, and hear about, the Republic's policies towards newly discovered worlds, in the past. During the conflict now known as the Clone Wars, I ran into a Jedi Knight by the name of Anakin Skywalker, and one Senator Padmé Amidala. I am fairly sure they harboured romantic feelings for each other, but I do not claim to know the extent to which they were realised."

Vader clenched his fists so hard the leather in his gloves creaked; the lingering stiffness in his new right hand grew so acute it ached. He could not alienate Thrawn as an ally. He could not alienate Thrawn as an ally. . .

"And with the Rebel leader calling herself Amidala now an ally," Thrawn _had_ to continue, "I found myself very intrigued by the knowledge that your son, and your daughter, have claimed the last name Skywalker."

Vader was going to _kill something_. If— If—

He didn't know what if.

He just knew that in this moment, he _hated_ Thrawn, staring at him with those red, red eyes.

"Skywalker and Amidala were worthy allies on Batuu," he said. "I look forward to working with them both again."

Very, very slowly, Vader's hands uncurled from their fists.

* * *

They were met by X-wings at the coordinates Ahsoka rattled off, which barely stuck around long enough to transmit another set of coordinates before they leapt to hyperspace themselves and vanished.

Luke watched their presences vanish go with a peculiar sense of envy—he'd found himself glued to the cockpit since he stepped inside it, sitting in one of the backseats and enjoying the sense of emptiness around him, imagining hyperspace. He only moved out when the pilots did, to play sabacc and dejarik and holochess with the others. (Ahsoka always won. Luke had to wonder where she'd learned to play it so well.) And even after that he shifted back to the cockpit for quiet reflection, Leia joining him more often than not—neither of them particularly wanted to let the other go.

There was one moment that he kept replaying in his head, from just before his father had let them leave Mustafar unmolested: he'd handed Luke his lightsaber hilt, and Luke had weighed it, blocky in his hand and so, so angry, then handed it back. His father had flinched, then taken it with some disappointment, and Luke had turned away.

He wished he knew what it had meant.

"Don't _you _just want to fly this ship?" Biggs asked him at one point, when they'd dropped out of hyperspace to manoeuvre through a particularly thorny nebula. "You were a brilliant pilot on Skystrike."

Luke smiled sadly and gestured to his eyes. "Not sure that's such a good idea."

Leia snorted. "You can walk fine."

"Manoeuvring a ship is a whole other thing, Leia."

She was probably raising her eyebrows at him. No; actually, he could feel her appraising gaze, feel her examining him in the Force.

"I think one day you'd be able to," she said, "with the Force."

Luke blinked, but tried not to get his hopes up.

They finally arrived at the transmitted coordinates. Luke sensed the massive ship that loomed before them like a small constellation of stars; a part of him tried to comb through all those little bright presences for a moment, to find Han, his mother, anyone he knew, before he gave up. That would only work with his father and his sister.

And he, his father and his sister were. . . unique individuals, when it came to the Force.

The orders came in over the comm and the _Hidden Star_ slotted itself into hangar bay 35E, Wedge and Biggs touching down with barely a whisper; Luke was impressed. He undid his crash webbing, squeezed Leia's hand and stood, stretching out his senses. . .

He smiled.

The moment they were strolling down the ramp, he swivelled his head around to try and find that one, familiar presence, for all that it wouldn't help him locate him. When he did, he dragged Leia in that direction eagerly, ignoring her suppressed groan.

"Solo," she greeted before he could get a word in edgewise, and Luke smirked a little at the way he sensed Han _bristle _at the dismissal.

"Han," he greeted warmly himself, smiling broadly. He felt Han smile back.

"Glad to see you're alive, kid." He patted him on the shoulder. "I... heard about your eyes. I'm sorry."

"Ah." Luke didn't know what to say to that, other than nod and accept to sympathies, but it didn't matter: almost immediately after, a larger presence came up behind Han and roared something in. . . Shyriiwook? "Hello?"

"I was getting there, I was getting there, Chewie," Han said, and something in Luke's mind went _oh_.

_Chewie_.

"This is Luke Skywalker, the insane kid who made me crawl through a trash compactor," Han said. "Kid, this is my co-pilot. Chewie."

Luke smiled up at him, using the Force to gauge himself until he was fairly sure he was meeting his eye. "It's lovely to finally meet you."

Chewie roared something affectionate in return and seized him into a hug.

Luke laughed into his fur.

* * *

After that it was a flurry of more introductions and reunions: Leia dragged him round everywhere, barely letting go of his wrist, showing him off to her friend Qi'ra; Jyn, and her scientist father he'd already had the pleasure of meeting; the rest of Biggs and Wedge's squadron, including Hobbie, who didn't quite know what to do with him, until Ahsoka pointed out quietly:

"I think there's a more important reunion to be made."

Leia paused, glancing at him. Luke took a few breaths, tried to squash his nervousness or reluctance—a part of him wondered if Leia had sensed that and decided to distract from and postpone this meeting for _him_, and he loved her for it—before he smiled. Nodded at her to lead the way.

Amidala's office was at the top of the ship, understandably near the bridge, and near the sleeping quarters of many of the high-ranking Rebels. The long turbolift trip up should've been made in awkward silence, but thankfully Ahsoka and Sabé—another friend Leia had introduced him to along the way—did not accompany them, so they went alone together.

And things were never awkward between them.

Leia squeezed his hand; Luke pressed his shoulder against hers. The journey up was made in a blissful silence.

Then they arrived with a _ding_, and Luke held his breath for the doors to open.

They were walking for sixteen seconds down the corridor before they stopped outside the office—the fifth on the left, if Luke was tracking the beings inside them well—and knocked. The already-unusually-tense figure inside stiffened further, but then called a voice Luke hadn't heard outside of outdated holo recordings in fifteen years:

"Come in."

Leia went in first, and smiled at their mother. She led Luke in by the hand and with the faintest touch of her mind sent an image: of a busy desk, crowded shelves, and a petite, pale woman sitting in the middle of it all, gaze fixed on him with a fierce intensity.

She looked. . . exactly how he'd always imagined her, and yet not.

Leia pushed him forwards lightly and he raised his hand in awkward greeting, scratching the back of his neck. "Hello."

There was a scraping noise as she pushed her chair back and rose. He could still feel her intense stare on his face.

"Luke," she whispered.

He blinked fiercely; suddenly, he realised he was crying.

Sharp, hurried footsteps, then his mother was standing in front of him and he was tilting his head down to blindly seek her gaze. She stifled a sob.

"Luke."

A hand, reaching for him, trembling, and he sagged as it landed on his cheek. She stepped forwards to place her other hand on his other cheek, to wipe his tears away, but he could hear her crying too now.

"Oh!" she said, smiling, reaching up to keep squishing his cheeks, like he was all of two years old. "You're tall!"

Luke burst out laughing. "I am _not_ tall."

She laughed too.

And, after a moment, Luke wrapped his arms around her torso and held on tight.

"_Luke_," she whispered.

"_M_—" He took a deep breath. "Mother."

She shifted her hand on his shoulder and whispered quietly enough into his ear that only he could hear: "Leia tells me that it was you who had faith in me—in who I was." She rested her forehead against his shoulder. "Thank you."

He just hugged her tighter in response.

She started crying in earnest now. "I— I'm sorry—"

"We're together," he whispered, again too quiet for anyone but her to hear. Tears soaked his face, and he suddenly felt... safe. He hadn't realised how long it had been since he'd felt safe. "There's nothing to be sorry about."

This was _strange_.

This was his _mother_.

He smiled, broadly, and extended a hand to Leia. She came in too, gladly, and Luke was suddenly having his ribs crushed by two small women. His sister, and his mother.

He smiled broader than he had in years.

* * *

_"You let your son escape."_

Vader flinched, still feeling the remains of Palpatine's wrath on his joints and flesh appendages—he had insisted they make the return flight to Coruscant, though Vader had taken a short detour round Alderaan, just so he could hover in orbit, close enough to feel this pain—but his mind was a castle locked up tight. He stayed silent.

"I. . . was overpowered, my master." He clenched his fist.

_"Ah, yes. Your _son_ overpowered you enough to cut off your own right hand in revenge for his?"_ Palpatine snorted. _"Your powers are weakening, my friend, if it was that easy for him."_

Vader flexed his new right hand again—the replacement prosthetic he'd fitted after he'd cut it off himself. After Luke hadn't.

"Yes, Master," he intoned. "I. . . was distracted by Leia's presence, when he did the deed, and he saw the perfect opportunity to take his revenge."

Why _hadn't_ Luke taken his revenge? He'd just handed him back his saber.

Vader didn't understand.

But he didn't need to understand his son for this. He just needed to love him, and protect him. He just needed to do his best by him, as he'd so woefully failed at so far.

Leia's bitter glare still bore holes in his heart.

_"And even if I was inclined to believe you there, Lord Vader,"_ Palpatine drawled, _"I have to ask how they got onto Mustafar in the beginning. I _did_ warn you to expect the attack—and yet I find your daughter free, and also your son, with no dead Jedi to show for it."_

Vader ground his teeth. "I believe there may have been inside cooperation, my master."

_"By whom? Are you confessing to your own treason, my lord?"_ He seemed amused by the thought.

"I would never, Master. The inside cooperation I speak of is from an Inquisitor. She had access to my castle from when she underwent her training here, and she abused the position I, and you, had put her in to help my traitorous son."

Palpatine leaned forwards. _"Lord Vader,"_ he asked, _"are you accusing who I think you are accusing?"_

Vader held his gaze and felt no remorse as he said: "I detected from Luke's unshielded mind, during his unconsciousness, that he actually failed to transmit the Death Star plans on Scarif. The person who _did_ transmit them was none other than the Hand you assigned to watch him. The Sixth Sister."

_"So,"_ Palpatine clarified, _"you believe _her_ to be the traitor in our midst—one of the many spies who has been haunting us in recent times?"_

"Yes, my master."

_"The Inquisitors are the epitome of deadly loyalty. I find it difficult to believe any would turn against me."_

_Me_. Vader noticed the slip.

He said, "She must have been corrupted."

_"It is no wonder,"_ his master said, _"who is responsible for that."_

Vader ignored the barb—and who it was directed at. "If we eliminate our last spy in the core of the Empire, we shall have the advantage over the Rebellion," he pushed. "We will have no weakness in our hearts the way they do in theirs."

_"I am counting on it, Lord Vader."_ Palpatine sounded amused again. Like this was a galactic holochess game, and he was enjoying the fact that everyone had just upped the stakes. _"And I doubt the beloved Sixth Sister was as effective a mole as dear Qi'ra is to us."_

_Qi'ra_.

So. That was the spy's name.

Whoever that was supposed to be.

Palpatine waved a lazy hand. _"Rise, Lord Vader, and resume your duties. I will consult with our spy, and see if there will be any other opportunities to recapture your unruly offspring. And in the meantime. . ."_

A part of Vader was unsettled by the predatory gleam in his eye. The rest of him was just spitefully glad that it was not directed at him or his family, for once.

A random Inquisitor's life was a minute price to pay, for that.

_"I will deal with the Sixth Sister myself."_

* * *

Vader's hologram vanished and Palpatine sat back in his chair to contemplate the mysteries of the Force.

He closed his eyes, confident in the knowledge that no one could reach the inner sanctum of his throne room without him knowing about it. And he reached out.

He had been uncertain of what to do with Luke, with Leia. Leia was still his, could still be enticed back; he was sure of it. Luke... had proven recalcitrant, and the one reason he had not yet had him executed was because of his power play with Vader. He did not want to make an enemy of the man—_yet_.

But if Luke... died, while with the Rebellion, there was no way Vader would know _how_. Only that he was dead. Vader would despise Leia for remaining with the Rebellion in the wake of it; Leia would despise Vader for remaining with the Empire just the same. He could pry the Skywalkers apart and take them for his own.

The Force spun around him in hooks of black and silver, threads in a tapestries stitching and re-stitching themselves until they coalesced into an image. . .

An image that took his breath away.

Coruscant, the jewel of his domain. Black and cold, not a single beam of light penetrating the fullness of the night. Luke and Leia, wandering that darkness like they called it home again, Luke as pale as a ghost and Leia vibrating with life and conviction, comfortable in their hatred. Leia grabbed for her brother but he vanished, and the shadows closed in.

Death rained upon the planet that was the dark heart of the Sith Empire. An empire that _would_ reign eternal.

This vision promised it.

The dark side would prevail. It always did.

He pressed his finger to the comm in the arm of his throne. "Send the Sixth Sister to my throne room immediately," he ordered, and barely listened to the responding voice.

_"It will be done, my lord."_

He raised his yellow gaze to the diamond-galaxy, shining in the throne room ceiling, smile sickly and sweet on his face.

* * *

**Ahsoka is amazing at dejarik because TCW established that Padmé was very good at it, and they've spent so many years together in this AU that Padmé has passed on all her secrets. XD**


	55. Mara, Alone

"Master!"

Flashes of violet and blue light, white, agony along her bones.

"Master, please!"

The inability to breathe, the cracking and grinding of _things_ breaking that should not be breaking—

"_Master!_"

This was all there was: the pain, the accusation and the betrayal—his or hers?—as he unleashed the power he'd only ever used sparingly on her, and she spasmed on the floor, lungs heaving like a shipwreck in a storm, as her head and shoulders slammed into the perfect polished floor again, and again, and again, and again—

And then all was dark, and silent, and still.

* * *

When she woke, her head was in agony, and her heart raced at the sheer shock of waking at all.

"Careful," said a perfect Core accent: female, human, with a quite old-fashioned speech pattern often heard around the Palace. "You're still injured. You barely survived."

The Sixth Sister—_Mara_, something deep inside her insisted, she was _Mara_—

She peeled her eyes open.

It was dark here—and it didn't smell that great either. Sort of... musty. The Force moved around her sluggishly, dark but. . . held back in some way, held at bay, and she choked on the lingering vestiges of light she could sense around her. She reached out—

And felt only an indiscriminate cloud reach back.

A face swam above her, pale and moon-like against the dark ceiling, then there was the hiss of a struck lighter and orange leapt up the walls.

Mara blinked through the flickering. The fire was small, and contained to one. . . _corner_, and if there was a corner there must be a structure.

Her eyes fanned out from there, peering through the brand the flame left on her retinas: it was a cramped, dusty room, and she was lying on a bed. There was a wardrobe in the corner, next to the door, wide open and stacked with. . . medical supplies?

"Thinking too hard might not help your head either," the woman said dryly, and handed her something. Mara's fingers wobbled on it, and only when she spilt half of it down her front did she realise: water. It was water.

She gulped it down greedily.

Then she took a deep breath, and another one, and another one, and another one, then looked at her saviour.

"You're— you're the librarian," she said.

The woman smiled, laugh lines around her eyes crinkling. "I am," she said.

"You helped Luke nearly escape. . ." Mara realised, and that smile fell. Mara tried to rise, tried to push herself to her feet and. . . _do something_, bring this spy and traitor to justice—

And a hand pushed her back down, stern and firm and _much_ stronger than she'd anticipated.

"Stay down," the librarian said. "You'll injure yourself."

"You're a _traitor_."

"You show a lot of loyalty to an Emperor who tried to kill you and was halfway to succeeding," she said. "I suppose that just shows how little he's worth it."

"How _dare you_—"

"Vader told him that it was you who transmitted the Death Star plans to the Rebellion, not Skywalker. So he killed you."

"But I'm still alive."

"I think," the librarian took the empty bottle of water and turned around to refill it, before passing it back to her, "you have Vader, again, to thank for that."

Mara blinked.

"Vader saved me?" she said. "He tried to have me killed."

"As I understand it, he needed a scapegoat. You were convenient. He didn't care enough about you either way to have an interest in the consequences."

"Then why did he save—"

"An unusual act of mercy on his part. I don't understand it myself—I just know that he dropped by Alderaan on his way to Coruscant to drag me back here after my last escape, smuggled you, half-dead, out of the throne room and told me to hide you in the Jedi Temple. I have some contacts in the underworld, they let me use their more... extensive medical facilities, as well as bacta, but I still doubt you're feeling stellar."

_Jedi Temple?_

_Alderaan?_

"How long was I unconscious?" she asked carefully. There was so much to enquire about, so much she didn't understand here—

"A while," Horada hedged. Mara sighed.

More questions.

_So many questions_.

But what she actually asked was, "Vader decided to save me but let Luke die?"

The librarian blinked at that.

Then she smiled, a little. Perhaps this was the only good news she had to bear. "Luke isn't dead. He survived, and Vader let him escape to join the Rebels."

Mara let out a breath.

The librarian smiled wider. "I was told that it doesn't matter where you go now—so long as you steer away from anything Imperial and refuse to say anything about this, which I'd hope you'd do out of sheer self-preservation. If Palpatine learns you survived, after what you've done, he _will_ kill you."

Mara nodded. "I don't know why I did it," she said bitterly.

"Because seeing the twins defect was an eye opener to the fact that not everything was as perfect in the Empire as appeared?" The librarian raised an eyebrow. Mara shifted, and winced. "Because travelling with Luke and the other one—what was his name, Solo?—showed that not everything had to involve pain and anger and antagonism? Because the concept of the Death Star is so horrendous that it eclipses absolutely everything good this regime has to offer, even to someone like you?"

Mara flinched. She thought about it.

Then she said, "I don't know why I didn't do it sooner."

The librarian smiled. "I have an old friend," she said, "an acquaintance of my daughter-in-law's, who's willing to take you wherever you want to go. You have the entire galaxy to choose from. No one's going to tell you what to do now—" She paused. "What's your name, sorry?"

"The Sixth Sister."

She looked at her piercingly, ice-chip eyes catching the firelight and almost glowing.

". . .Mara Jade," she admitted, and found the corners of her mouth curled upwards as she made the _A_ sounds, and stayed there. "My name is Mara Jade."

"It's nice to meet you, Mara Jade," the librarian said. "I'm Ittes Horada."

* * *

Horada had helped Mara dye her hair a dull brown before they left, and given her a hood to hide her face with. _Everything_ hurt, with a dull sort of ache, especially her head, but thankfully she also had a speeder, so they didn't have to walk to the spaceport, and nor was she adverse to letting Mara lean on her when she got too exhausted to walk upright. But they kept moving.

They had to.

"Keep your head down," Horada murmured. "I've acquired you a fake ID chip just to get off this planet, but it won't register in their systems after a week so after that you're on your own."

"I'm never alone," Mara said automatically. In the Inquisitorius, there were always brothers or sisters watching you, judging you, assessing you, waiting for you to trip. . .

Horada cast her a look. "Then maybe this will be good for you," was all she said.

Mara blinked. "My real name isn't in the records anyway—it helps for stealth missions, and the point is that Inquisitors don't have identities."

"How barbaric."

She didn't answer that one.

But they made it through the checks without issue, and into the docks. Once they were there, Horada led her straight to Docking Bay 76, where a sleek freighter with a narrow front and wide back had its landing ramp down, a dark-skinned human woman leaning against it.

Mara paused, and forced herself to stand up straight, stop leaning on Horada. The woman wore all black, and had several large blasters strapped to her sides, her back, and her leg; enough that Mara _itched_ at her lack of weapons. She didn't smile when she saw the two of them approaching, but she did straighten up.

"Ittes," she greeted. It wasn't warm, but it wasn't cold, and Mara was used to coldness anyway. "And you must be the mysterious passenger I agreed to take."

"Thank you for doing this, Sana, I know you usually stick to bounty hunting."

"Your daughter's paying me a lot." Sana shrugged. "And she's paying me a lot especially to make sure you get back to Alderaan in one piece, instead of getting killed playing hero, so you'd better be coming with me as well and I'll dump you off there afterwards. Clara's just started walking."

Horada smiled. "I heard."

Sana turned her gaze on Mara, then. "You gonna give me your name, or will it be another one of _those_ jobs?"

She debated it for a moment—she had a lot of aliases to pick from, and was used to responding to names that weren't her own. But she found herself offering, "Mara."

"Mara. Nice name." It was, she thought, and something warmed in her gut. It was. "Get on board. Where do you wanna go?"

Mara followed her in, her limp almost forgotten in her sudden excitement to be off Coruscant, to be. . . _free_. She'd followed Sana all the way to the cockpit before she processed the question, and by then she was being given a quizzical look.

"I. . . uh. . ."

"I can take you straight to Alderaan," Sana offered. "The Horada family would probably be thrilled to help you out. They're like that. Lots of opportunities on Alderaan."

Mara paused. "You're a bounty hunter."

"Yes?"

"Someone like _you_ knows someone like _Horada_?"

"I know her daughter-in-law," Sana grumbled. She suddenly looked uncomfortable, shooting a look back to where Horada had vanished into the backrooms, probably finding her seat. "And, as I said. There's a lotta opportunities on Alderaan, for those who wanted to start a new life."

Mara nodded.

"So. Where'd you wanna go?"

She wanted to start a new life, she thought. But not a peaceful one.

Master had tried to kill her.

She wasn't done with the war yet.

"Naboo," she said. "I want to go to Naboo."

Sana's eyebrows shot up. "That place has been on lockdown since the Battle of Naboo," she said. "It'll be hard to get in, and hard to get around." She snorted. "Legally, at least."

"That's what I'm counting on." Mara took her seat in one of the chairs in the cockpit, and fitted her crash webbing tenderly around her still-aching torso. "You think you can do it?"

Sana grinned. "You bet I can."

* * *

She did.

Mara didn't have the faintest idea _how_ she'd got hold of a choice of so many codes that would get her through the lockdown so easily, but she supposed that as a bounty hunter or smuggler, she for one thing had experience, and for another was exactly who Naboo would be turning to now, for their much needed supplies.

Naboo had cut itself off from the Empire entirely, in the wake of the Death Star—Rebel ships formed a blockade around the place, defending it from any sort of Imperial retribution, mingled with Nubian starfighters and others from the planet's volunteer army.

This was a PR _disaster_ for the Emperor.

Naboo was a peaceful planet, on the surface, Mara thought. But it was—evidently—nonetheless ready for war.

They docked without opposition. While Sana and Horada went to deal with the officers coming to greet them, Mara snuck out round the back and into the streets.

_Thank you,_ she'd said before they went, the gratitude alien on her tongue.

_Until we meet again,_ was all Horada said. _And try to keep out of trouble, young one. You have your whole life ahead of you_.

The sentiment was sweet and genuine, Mara thought as she walked away, down streets sparsely populated, past buildings graceful and warm. This was Palace Plaza; she'd get where she was going soon.

The sentiment was sweet and genuine, but. . .

She stopped in front of the Palace, letting feigned awe hide the calculated flick of her gaze from the guards to the windows to the gates.

But getting into trouble was _exactly what she'd come here for_.

* * *

Really. She'd have thought that security would've been better than this, especially after Moff Panaka had been assassinated on one of Naboo's moons only two years ago. Perhaps the aggressive front was the façade, after all.

Or—she ducked behind a corbel seconds before a motion sensor triggered a holocam to open in one of the fancy carvings on the high fence, the lens tiny but glinting in the noonday sun—perhaps not.

Nothing was as it seemed, on this planet.

It reminded her of her master, in that way.

So. She couldn't vault the fence or wall; she'd be caught. She couldn't walk in the gate, for obvious reasons. She couldn't hope to get into that palace in absolutely any way other than. . .

Marching feet. She shrank back against the corbel again, eyes tightly shut and breathing slowed, until they passed. She stayed silent for a moment longer, just in case, and in that silence all she heard was. . .

A deafening, deafening roar.

The waterfalls. Which cascaded down the cliffs into the lake Theed was built around from. . .

. . .right under the Palace.

She smiled.

* * *

The first thing Queen Dalné of Naboo noticed when she entered the royal sitting room was that it was unusually empty. Usually one of her handmaidens would be here at this time, to help her go through reports or revise the plans for the defence of Naboo, but no one was there. She frowned, scanning the place. . .

And her gaze landed on the rich, burgundy curtains.

Or rather, the carpet underneath them: wet with water, despite the fact that even with the window open there was no way the waterfall sprayed this high except during floods. . .

She didn't have the time to muse about it. The moment she took a step forwards, _something_ shot out and seized her wrist, pushing her down onto one of the fine sofas while a stray wind slammed the door shut.

And locked it.

Belatedly, she opened her mouth to scream—

"Your Highness," said a high voice—female, young, breathless—"I am not here to hurt you. I just need your help."

"There are more official ways of gaining the help of a queen," she hissed into the hand.

"Ways that would get the attention of whatever Imperial spies you have left in your staff, certainly."

Dalné stiffened at that.

She couldn't deny that.

"Who are you?" she demanded.

The hand was removed from her mouth and the figure shifted, to land in a crouching position on the floor in front of her. The woman—girl, really; about Dalné's age—looked up through a sheet of dull brown hair and her expression was wary, but not threatening.

"My name is Mara Jade," she said. "And I'm desperately trying to get in contact with Luke and Leia Skywalker."

She cast a wry glance at the papers on the table, at the battleships just visible beyond the window, at Dalné's makeup for the day, painted for war.

"I don't suppose you have contacts with the Rebellion I can utilise?"

* * *

"Luke and Leia—"

"Luke and Leia Skywalker, yes," Mara snapped. Her nerves were getting to her; she needed to calm down, and convince this young queen to help her. "Leia Skywalker, the pilot who destroyed the Death Star before it could destroy you—"

"I _know_ who Leia Skywalker is—"

"—and her brother, who sent her the plans so she knew how to do it—can you make contact with them?"

The Queen glared. "I don't know why I should do _anything_ for you."

"Then don't." Mara held out her hands. "Lock me up, throw me in the dungeons, do whatever you want. But _I know_ that you are in regular contact with Amidala—those Alliance ships out there didn't come from nowhere—and if you tell her that Mara Jade is looking for Luke Skywalker, she will understand."

The Queen just gave her a pitying look. She probably thought she was crazy.

"Guards!" she shouted. Mara forced herself to stand still—to not smile, to not grimace, to not fidget. She was so nervous. "There's an intruder in here!"

And as she was led away, all she had was hope that this would work.

* * *

Dalné took a deep breath and punched in the frequency Amidala had given her, in the immediate communiqués in the aftermath of the destruction of the Death Star, when debris had still formed a ring around the planet. She was highly aware that it was largely her own hero worship of the woman who had been Naboo's beloved queen might well be to blame for the eagerness she'd pledged Naboo to the Rebellion with, but it was backed up by pragmatism: Palpatine had tried to _destroy her planet_.

Palpatine had turned against his homeworld, and the Rebellion—this _Leia Skywalker_ that Jade had spoken of, that Amidala had mentioned briefly and professionally—had destroyed his toy before he could.

As far as Dalné, and many of her non-Imperial bootlicker advisors, was concerned, she had an interest in ensuring that Palpatine never built one of those toys again.

Amidala responded surprisingly quickly—or rather, an aide did, who looked surprisingly like her. It took less than a moment for Dalné to clock what that meant.

_"Your Highness,"_ the woman—one of Amidala's handmaidens, it had to be—said, smiling. _"My lady will be with you in a moment."_

"Thank you," Dalné said, then couldn't help but ask: "Are you. . .?" She swallowed. Stars, she was _queen_, she should be more in control over this, but this was her childhood hero, this was— "Lady Sabé?"

Amidala's body double. A member of the greatest royal retinue in modern Nubian history, the retinue who Dalné's parents had imitated in her name—

The woman, about the same age as Amidala, smiled. _"I am."_

Dalné took a deep, deep breath. Alright. Alright. She could stay calm.

"I have a message for Lady Amidala," she said in her queen's voice—strong, unwavering, unaccented. She could stay calm. "There is a woman—girl, teenage girl—here, asking to get in contact with Luke and Leia Skywalker. She says her name is Mara Jade, if that means anything to you."

_"It does not,"_ said a voice, but it wasn't Sabé speaking; another woman of the same age stepped into the range of the holoprojector and Dalné tried not to squeal. That would be very unprofessional. _"However, it may mean something to Luke and Leia. Thank you for contacting me, Your Highness; I will speak to them and ask what this may mean, if the delay is no problem?"_

Dalné swallowed. "None at all, Lady Amidala."

Amidala laughed. _"I am no lady, Your Highness."_

"You are to Naboo," she said fiercely. . . then calmed down. Calm down.

Amidala left, but the time wasn't wasted; while she was gone, Dalné and Sabé went back over the security situation of Naboo, and what, exactly, had happened with the Death Star. Luke Skywalker had got hold of the plans, his twin sister Leia Skywalker had destroyed it, and. . .

"That's quite the remarkable family then, isn't it?" Dalné marvelled.

Sabé smiled, and glanced to where Amidala was returning, judging by the footsteps in the background. _"You have no idea."_

Amidala popped into the hologram a moment later. _"You can confirm," _she said sternly, _"that Jade has no trackers and no weapons on her, nor does she have any hope of getting them so long as she is on Naboo?"_

Dalné wanted to shrink, under that intense, righteous gaze, but she said, "Yes, my lady. We had her in our cells, initially, but now we have her in the cell block's medbay—she has some injuries that were severe and hadn't been fully treated, and I don't have any idea how she made it this far without dropping dead. We are treating her now."

_"That's good. Is there anything else that may help us to know?"_

Dalné frowned. "She claimed on further questioning of her story that someone called _Ittes Horada_ helped her, but _that_ is a name I do not know."

But Amidala clearly did.

Her mouth curved into a smile. _"Thank you, Your Highness," _she said. _"I will be sending a ship, named the _Hidden Star_, to Naboo. The crew will be familiar with her—they'll ask her a few questions, then decide what to do from there."_

"Very well, my lady," Dalné said. "I look forward to their arrival."

* * *

Mara woke up to the characteristic _clomp, clomp, clomp_ of the queen's guards just beyond the medbay door, and peeled her eyes open to see Her Highness, bedecked in dark green with a silver, feathered headdress perched over her blonde hair, approaching. The white makeup, with a three red and silver tears dotted on the left side of her cheek, smoothed her expression to a faint, disapproving look, but the Force revealed the truth: she was anxious. Extremely so.

"Mara Jade," she greeted. "You have visitors."

Mara lifted her gaze to the _other_ thing she could sense in the Force, then, and scowled.

Luke grinned. "It's nice to see you too, Jade."

"Skywalker. You're alive," she drawled, as he came to sit in the plastic medbay chair beside her bed. He was carrying a long, gnarled cane in his left hand and took several attempts to get his free hand onto the chair he was looking for. "I had my doubts."

"A little electrocution never hurt anybody."

She glared, at that, and looked down at her own body. Luke had the good grace to wince.

Someone in the Queen's clump of guards shifted, broadcasting distrust; when she glanced, it was Leia Skywalker—of _course_ it was Leia Skywalker, Mara doubted she'd let her brother out of her sight since she'd seen him again—and she wasn't glaring, but she wasn't gazing sympathetically either. It was more. . . wary.

"What happened?" Luke asked, a little more gently.

Mara turned back to him. "You were right," she said. "You didn't manage to pull the lever on the console in time to transmit the plans. I did that with the Force."

"I know."

"Your father knew too. And he ratted me out."

Luke's mouth dropped open.

She— she could _feel_ his shock, his betrayal and. . . _disgust_, before he slammed his shields down and both hands gripped the head of his cane so tightly she could see the relief of his tendons across his knuckles.

"When he said—" he started. "He promised—"

He sighed.

"I'm sorry," he said.

"Don't apologise. It's not you who did it."

"No," he agreed, and angled his cane to knock it against the side of the bed, then stood up. "But I'm making up for it. You're coming with us, if—" He paused, glancing between her and his sister. "If you want to."

She snorted, and shoved herself to her feet. Everything hurt, but she didn't care anymore.

Horada and Sana had given her that choice. To let herself rest, and relax, and live a normal life.

She was an Inquisitor—an _ex-Inquisitor_. She would not have a normal life anytime soon. She might _never_ have a normal life, unless. . .

"Let's go find a way to kill Palpatine," she snapped, glancing at Leia.

The girl smiled at her, at that, and Mara took a moment to wonder why they'd never got along before.


	56. Likewise

"I can't _believe_ you dropped everything to go and fetch her."

Luke smiled, and just reached for the next lock of hair to keep plaiting, tugging lightly until Leia got the message and stopped fidgeting. He was operating mainly by touch, but he'd done this often enough with his sight that he knew where to place each strand.

"Can't you?" he asked wryly. His backside was getting stiff against the bunk so he shifted, tsking lightly when she took the opportunity to shift as well.

"No," she admitted, "I can. And I can believe that you _still trust her_, after everything, as well."

"Because you sort of trust her too?"

"Because you're an _idiot_ and the last year has only proven that in increasingly alarming clarity."

Luke smiled. "But you do trust her too."

Leia grumbled, "I never said _I_ wasn't an idiot as well."

Luke physically tipped back his head and _laughed_ at that, like birds were fluttering up in his chest and escaping, leaving him all the lighter for it. After a moment, Leia joined in; her own laughter pealed out as he finished tying the intricate braid, and she swung her head to smack him in the face with the end of it.

Luke rubbed his nose. "Rude," he said. "Why'd you do that?"

She stuck her tongue out at him. Of course she did.

There was laughter at the doorway. Luke's wide smile didn't falter; he just turned it straight on his mother, whose presence brightened significantly in the Force at the sight of it.

"May I join you?" she asked, almost tentatively.

Luke made a sweeping hand gesture to invite her in; Leia whacked him on the shoulder for being dramatic. Padmé laughed again, glancing around the room—it was a small room, and Leia hadn't been sharing with anyone so Luke was just moved straight in here when he arrived, to share with the person he'd shared everything else with from the moment he was born. But Padmé found a seat on Luke's bunk, close enough to Leia's that they knocked knees when she sat down.

"Your hair looks lovely," she said to Leia. "I don't think I've seen you in that style before."

"That's because she can't do it herself, and needs me to," Luke said.

That earned him an elbow jab to the side. "As if. Don't flatter yourself."

"If you know how to do it, why haven't you worn it since you last saw me?"

Leia said nothing—just scowled. He grinned.

Padmé grinned as well, though from the sounds of her next words, she had the good grace to smother it in her hand. She didn't remove that hand before she said, "I thought you'd like to know, Jade has been put back in bacta—to clear up any of her remaining injuries. After that she's recommended bed rest for forty eight hours, but—"

"She's not gonna abide that."

Padmé sighed. "I got that impression."

"Don't worry—I'll talk to her, try to make sure she does."

"Oh yeah," Leia said. He did not like that tone. "That reminds me what we were talking about before."

Luke groaned. "Leia—"

"Look, I get it, she's pretty. But between her and Solo, I genuinely would've thought you'd go for Solo. He's attractive in his own way, if you're interested in men."

Luke felt his cheeks flush hot.

Leia _cackled_. "_Oh_."

"It was a brief interest," he defended, "for a brief time, right in the middle."

"I'm surprised your poor heart didn't explode, stuck in a room with those two."

"I had _bigger things to worry about_."

"I guess you did," Padmé said easily, and _Force_, now there were two of them— "But you don't necessarily now. You can—"

"Please don't finish that sentence. I _do_ have bigger things to worry about right now." His gaze fell—more out of habit than a useless desire to not meet anyone's eye. He reached for the already-familiar head of his cane, clutching it. "Palpatine is still alive. The Empire still stands. We've still got work to do."

"You've already done more than enough, Luke," Padmé said, gently. She reached out to place her hand on top of his, clasping his cane around it; her skin was cool and calming in a way that even his tight grip was not. "If you want, we can certainly find a way for you to hide out on a planet somewhere until we have killed Palpatine and the galaxy is safe for you, and you can act like teenagers rather than soldiers."

For a moment, Luke let himself entertain the thought. He could sense Leia doing the same.

They could leave. They could abandon the legacy of _greatness_ Palpatine and Vader had spent so long foisting onto their shoulders and vanish, already heroes of the Rebellion, to live in peace for a least some precious time. Luke could plait his sister's hair somewhere that was not a warship; flirt with someone who was not assigned to watch and restrict him; do something for fun, rather than because he thought it would make his father proud.

And he would, he knew. One day. One day they could leave the galaxy to spin and sit back, and enjoy the peace they had won.

But not today.

"My family is right here," he said. He didn't need the Force to know that, despite herself, she beamed at that. "And I won't run from our war—not before it's won. Peace will come when it comes, and I will enjoy it when it does."

Leia took his other hand and squeezed it, laying her head on his shoulder. "Likewise."

Padmé's thumb rubbed across his knuckles in three more soothing motions before she let go again, returning her hand to rest in her lap.

"Your cane," she said. "Does it help? I heard it was a gift from Master Yoda."

"It does help a lot—non-living objects don't exactly register very well in the Force—and it was." He smiled. "He said not to let Leia near it with a lit lightsaber, whatever that meant."

Leia made a sound like she was choking on air, but did not elaborate.

Padmé laughed again—she clearly knew as well, as little as anyone saw fit to tell him right now—but her mirth vanished all too quickly. She seemed. . . pensive.

Luke and Leia asked at the same time, "What is it?"

She smiled at them, but her tone was serious: "I need you to tell me something about your father."

Leia scoffed. "That's he's a piece of—"

"Leia."

"Luke." She couldn't quite fit the same amount of attitude into one syllable that he could into two, but she came close.

Padmé said, "You said that he's willing to work with the Rebellion. That he wants to depose Palpatine. And you both know what Operation Eclipse was—what it aimed to do."

"Take out all the central power grid on Coruscant, as well as the one for the Palace," Leia said, "and launch an attack to seize the capital and depose Palpatine once and for all. Bring the majority of the war to a bloody but decisive end."

She winced. "Yes, you could put it like that."

"It's very idealistic," Luke—the only person in the room who'd been _extensively_ trained on military matters, but also the most idealistic himself—said. "The section of the fleet that's in orbit around Coruscant at any given time is enormous. Even without power, it'd be a bloodbath, with no guarantee of winning."

Padmé lifted her chin. "And if your father and his coup get involved?" she asked. "If our numbers swell beyond _anything_ we've ever seen, and most of the fleet are ordered to stand down or not attack us at all?"

"Enough of them are under Palpatine's direct command that it'd still be a bloodbath," Luke said. "But. . . it could work."

"It could work," Padmé repeated. "And. . . do you trust your father?"

"Yes."

"No."

"_Leia._"

"_Luke_."

"He knows who you are," Luke said baldly, ignoring the way his mother twitched at the reminder. "He'd do anything for you, and he will. He made the offer of peace—if you're worried about whether or not it's genuine, it is. He'll do it."

Leia. . . couldn't disagree with that.

"If he gets cold feet?" was what she did say.

He smiled a little bitterly. "I never said he didn't need watching. He does. But he'll do it, and his worth as an ally outweighs the risk." He turned back to his mother. "And there is a great deal of risk to _all_ of this."

Her tone flattened. "There is."

Her clothes crinkled and whispered against each other as she stood. "I'll have to go and contact him then," she said, though there was an attempt at a smile in her voice. "Under heavy encryption—protect our identities, and—"

"Avoid confronting him by pretending to be absolutely anyone else?" Leia said bluntly.

Padmé puffed out a breath. "_Yes_, Leia," she said. "Maybe."

"I'll come with you then," Leia insisted, standing up herself. "He'll want to communicate with _one _of us—just to. . . ease him into being a Rebel, and Luke doesn't have clearance to the comms room yet, does he?"

Luke smiled wryly. Padmé winced. "I am working on that."

"It's nothing," he dismissed. "I'll just go and practise sparring again—and Master Yoda said that gimer sticks are hollow, can be used to store weapons." He stamped his against the floor twice. "Maybe I can talk him into showing me how to hide my lightsaber in my cane, like some swashbuckling Jedi."

Leia grinned, at that. "You'd still look pathetic."

"_Thank you_, Leia, don't you have somewhere to be?"

She stuck her tongue out at him, and then they both left, shutting the door behind him.

* * *

The clash of lightsabers reverberated in his ears. Luke jerked back, Ezra's swipe singeing his sleeve; jerked forwards, his lightsaber bearing down to crash against the other. Ezra grunted, stumbling back a few steps at the sheer force of the blow, then a warning in the Force had Luke throwing himself to the side, ducking away from the crate that flew right for his head.

It crashed past him but Ezra caught it in midair, spinning it and trying again, and Luke scowled, brows furrowing fiercely as he tried to get a grip on it before—

He halted that crate in midair.

But another one smashed into him and sent him tumbling to the floor.

He was on his feet again in an instant, saber summoned, to meet Ezra's flurry of blows with quick precision—_high, low, side, low, deflect, parry, riposte_—and kicked out with his leg. He missed Ezra's knee; that was alright. He hit something a bit more effective.

Ezra _yelped_, toppling forwards and Luke leapt over him in a neat flip, pivoting—

Right as another crate flung itself at him. He sliced it in half; the pieces battered the air from his lungs and he went down with an _oomph_.

Ezra was on his feet again now, stalking forwards; Luke kicked up, onto this hands then onto his feet again and lit his saber in time to deflect Ezra's, a _screeching_ noise ringing out as it skittered off. Then a step forwards, hammering down, forcing Ezra to stumble back—

And a foot hooked behind his knee and sent him down.

He shoved himself up—and paused at the saber at his throat.

Sabine Wren called out, laughing, "You got lucky there, Ezra, and you know it."

"Remember to centre yourself in the Force, Luke," Kanan said, stepping forwards. "That was. . . _really impressive_," Luke could sense his regard—and his _surprise_—through the Force, "but we both know it's difficult to totally sense all your surroundings if you don't give yourself over to the Force completely."

Luke nodded. His. . . hesitation, he admitted, stemmed from being so used to the dark side. After so long just _using_. . . if he just. . . let go, of everything, and trusted that the tool would not turn against the wielder, what would happen?

And what would happen if, in the heat of the moment, he brushed against the darkness he'd grown to resent so ferociously?

"Trust the Force," Kanan told him, putting a hand on his shoulder. Luke nodded, but twisted his lips. "Trust _yourself_."

Luke smiled, at that, and deactivated his saber.

"Master Yoda tells me you've been making progress in your meditation—that you've been doing very well. Try to apply that here."

Luke nodded again, breathing deeply, then smirked in Ezra's direction. He got a punch to his shoulder in return.

"Catch," Sabine shouted, and Luke planted his feet, stretched out with the Force, _gave_ himself to the Force, listened for the whistling through the air—and caught his gimer stick, neatly.

Ezra whistled. "Third time lucky."

"Nineteenth time lucky," Luke corrected, but he was smiling. And he was sure that Sabine had enjoyed the first eighteen times, where he'd been battered in the head, the arm, the leg. Revenge for Skystrike.

He brought the stick down to rap it experimentally on the floor. "Do you want to go again?"

Ezra scratched the back of his neck. "Sorry, Luke, but Hera's got a job for us. We're late for it as it is."

"Alright," he smiled, "have fun. See you later."

Sabine tossed over her shoulder as she left, "See you later, demon," and he grinned.

Then they were gone.

He glanced around the room in the Force. The disused hangar on _Home One _that had by now been permanently repurposed as a sparring room for them was possibly the most familiar room on the ship to him, with its training mats and boxes of potential weapons shoved in the corner, the empty crates stacked against one wall, ready to be used to build platforms. For a moment he considered building a training course to run himself, but with Leia and his mother still in the comms room, Yoda busy conferring with the Force and the _Ghost_ crew off on some mission, he didn't want to risk something going wrong.

So he sighed, smiled to himself, and deactivated his saber. Master Yoda had given him a look earlier when he'd gone to find him, harrumphed and showed him what he'd wanted to know; Luke slotted the hilt into his stick now, and tapped idly on the floor.

He sensed her approaching before she even reached the door, the Force now a constant net that swirled around him, a jumping, living thing. It was still. . . alien but familiar enough that _completely_ surrendering himself to it seemed odd, but he did it. And it worked.

"Hello," he said warmly without even turning around, "you must be Qi'ra."

She laughed. She had a nice laugh, he thought, and a nice voice. "I am. I see Leia's mysticism runs in the family."

"Not on my mother's side, if you've noticed there."

"I've noticed that, certainly." Her accent was pure Core, perfectly refined. It was _odd_—even Luke, raised in the highest of Imperial echelons, didn't have an accent that refined. "I heard you were sparring here. Fancy another opponent?"

Luke turned to face her, then—it was polite, even if it made no difference for him. His lips quirked upwards. "Sure. Do you wanna fight with a blaster, or can you use a lightsaber, or. . .?"

"I've got this," Qi'ra said.

Luke blinked. "You're gonna have to tell me what _this_ is."

She laughed again. Tapped. . . _something_ against the floor, so it made a metallic clinking noise. "It's a sword—made to be lightsaber resistant. I kept it from my old job—"

"—at Crimson Dawn?" Luke remembered.

"Yes. It was one of my favourite things, so I held onto it when I left—kept it with my stuff in the Rebellion, so I didn't lose it in captivity."

"You're slightly Force-sensitive, aren't you?" He probed her presence—strong enough to have significant shields, a significant connection, but not a threat. Not at all. "Did Maul teach you to fight Force-sensitives? Is that why you have that?"

"Got it in one." She moved closer, her footsteps echoing on the floor.

"Describe to me how long the sword is."

"Only a few inches shorter than your lightsaber."

"Alright." He let himself grin at her, and found a burst of relief behind her shields when she saw it. "Head over to the other end, and we can fight."

"No levitation," she said, eyeing the crates—particularly the crate that had been carved in two. "I can't do that."

"Noted. Let's make this fair."

"Sounds good."

Qi'ra quickly took her place at one end of hangar bay. Luke took his at the other, and he was about to call out and count down from three when he heard from the door—

"What the _kriff_ is going on here?"

"Han!" Luke spun to face him, smiling, but he felt Qi'ra's awkwardness ratchet up. No problem. "We were just about to practise sparring, if you want to stay and watch?" A roar. "You too, of course, Chewie."

Qi'ra was _definitely_ feeling uncomfortable now, and he cast her a concerned glance, but he sensed her wave it off as nothing and resume her ready position.

"There are some crates over there you can sit on," Luke called out, then he cast aside his cane and lit his lightsaber. It moved lightly in his hands—oddly lightly; he was still getting used to this—and he swung it around a bit, unable to help his smile.

"I heard it was you who killed Maul," Qi'ra said as they began to pace a circle around each other, careful.

Luke shrugged. "Don't get me wrong, Leia did a lot of the work. It was just me who struck the killing blow."

"Still. Thanks for killing him."

"I can genuinely say that at the time, it was my pleasure." Though now, something in his gut twisted at the thought of how. . . brutal that fight had been, how cold, how painful.

How pitiful he had seemed when he finally died.

"It's impressive," she said. "He wasn't easy to beat."

Luke shrugged. There wasn't any real arrogance in it, but if she knew Han, he imagined she was used to that in her opponents; he let her see whatever she wanted to read into it. "Neither am I."

The attack came hard, fast; he dove to the side and rolled and the sword just smashed into the floor with enough force to make his teeth vibrate. She was fast, though; within a moment she'd yanked it back and swung again, just in time for him to catch it neatly on his saber.

"Not bad," he quipped.

He could feel her grin. "Why, thank you."

Another slash—Han, in the corner, _gasped_ and both Luke and Qi'ra smothered grins as she darted back neatly, the lightsaber just missing her front, and brought in a swinging, two handed counterattack that forced Luke to use two hands to block. Three more blows—jab, swing, stab—and he was forcing her back, stumbling towards the far wall. The Force thrummed around him, in his veins; he knew nothing but a glittering stream of _life_ around him, and the broad brushstrokes of crates, weapons racks, other dangers constructed from the constant warnings it blared at him. He took a deep breath, revelling in the _feeling_ of it all. . .

Then a klaxon came, and the sword whipped back down again and it was only Luke's deep connection with the Force—so deep he was only half in control of his own actions—that had him parrying, perfectly. Qi'ra's gasp was loud in his ears as he stepped forwards, catching her blade on his with ease, blocking the next one, then _twisting_—

And it spun out of her grip. When he heard it clatter across the floor, he gave a satisfied smile.

She bared her teeth in a smile as well, but it felt far more forced. "Impressive," she said. "You didn't even get a scratch."

"I try. Do you want to—"

"Han!" Qi'ra said. "What are you doing?"

Luke turned towards where he could sense Han, creeping forwards, along the wall. . . There was the sound of scraping, then Han grunted as he picked up Qi'ra's lost sword and walked over to them.

He held it out to her when he was a few feet away.

"Nice sword," he said.

"Thank you," she said politely. She reached out a hand, but didn't take it. "If you're going to give it back, could you hand me the pommel?"

"Why?"

She scoffed. "Because I don't want to touch the blade." Even Luke could feel the weight of her stare, boring into Han. If her eyes looked _anything_ like Leia's, he winced in Han's sympathy.

Han laughed a little, smiling. "Because it's poisoned?"

The silence that reigned for a moment was deafening.

Then Qi'ra whipped out the blaster at her side, levelled it at Luke's chest, and shot.

* * *

The hologram flickered to life in front of her—not of her father, not on a transmission this heavily encrypted, but of an Imperial cog, denoting the source of the transmission. The corners of Leia's mouth tugged down at that; she stood stiffly next to her mother, waiting for the conversation to begin—for someone to speak.

Padmé nudged her with her elbow. Oh.

Leia cleared her throat, suddenly glad that no one else was in the comms room with them. "Father?" she asked, then winced. Sharpened her tone to a snap: "Are you going to speak?"

When he did, the encryption scrambled his tone, his vocoder and voice, but she'd recognise that speech pattern anywhere.

_"I am, daughter."_ So. He could tell her apart from her brother based on her speech pattern as well. _"What have you contacted me for?"_

Leia glanced at Padmé. Padmé said, in a cool and monotone voice, "This is a check-in, primarily to see if you have acquired any useful information you would care to share with us, and to also discuss a potential military operation your involvement would be useful for."

_"I understand,"_ he said. _"I have little new information to report, other than that the spy leaking many of the Rebellion's secrets goes by the name of Qi'ra."_

Leia froze.

She leaned forwards and gripped the edge of the console, staring at that little blue circle. "_What_ did you say?"

_"That the spy's name is Qi'ra."_

She sucked in a breath.

Glanced at Padmé.

"I will send someone to detain her immediately after this," she murmured, quiet enough so that Vader couldn't hear. "We'll investigate this fully before acting on it—I know she's your friend, Leia."

Leia nodded.

"Now." She raised her voice. "We have an operation we will need you to help with."

A pause. _"And what is the point of this operation?"_

"Simple," Padmé said. "To kill the Emperor."

_"Then of course, I am interested."_

"Good, now—"

"Wait," Leia said.

Padmé blinked, turning to her with a frown. "Leia, are you—"

"We need to go and get to Qi'ra _now_," she said. She stumbled back from the console until she hit the wall of filing cabinets behind her, eyes wide. The Force was. . . _crashing_, and warping, and when she reached out to her brother she sensed—

Panic.

Padmé was reaching a hand for her. "Leia—"

"_Now_!" she said.

And without a word more, she dashed out of the room.

* * *

"No, Leia, wait!"

Padmé stared between the slammed door and the hologram, trying to take deep breaths. She needed to— she needed to get this plan sorted, and discussed, but she also needed to talk to her daughter and make sure her son was all right, she needed to—

She turned back to the holoprojector. He would understand if she postponed it; Leia was _his_ daughter too, after all. He'd probably despise her if she didn't.

"I. . . will have to go and follow her," she said hurriedly. "We will contact you again soon, Anakin, but thank you for this information. I feel it will become very useful."

She noticed her slip the moment he did.

_"Padmé—?"_ he made to ask, but then she slammed the button to disconnect, and the hologram flickered out.

* * *

Qi'ra fired, but Han fired too; a stun shot by the sound of it, striking Qi'ra right in the side so she went down with an _oomph_, but her shot was still going and Luke was frozen in shock and at close range and—

Han dived in front of him, the bolt punching into his bicep. He yelped.

Qi'ra was halfway to the floor already, but he shot her again for good measure.

Then he dropped that sword with a clatter.

"Poison," he grunted. "She stuck poison—a specific type, it's colourless but Chewie recognised the shimmer—on the edge of the blade and was gonna kill you—!

"Thank you, Chewie," Luke said over his shoulder, "since I wasn't about to, but—" He clasped Han's right shoulder and didn't dare reach for his left arm too. "Han, you're hurt."

"Heh. It's nothing."

"You didn't have to take that shot for me."

"And let it punch through your chest? Face your sister and mother and Red when I'd just let you die? No, kid."

Luke let out a breath. "Come on," he said "let's get you to a medic—"

"Luke!"

He sighed when Leia stormed in, crackling with anger and concern, the Force bunching around her, before she clapped eyes on Qi'ra's unconscious body.

"You knew she was the spy?" she asked, flabbergasted.

"The _spy_?"

"No," Han said angrily, "but I _do_ know that she just tried to kill Luke!"

Leia's gaze snapped to Luke, unerringly. He squirmed under the intensity of it. "You can't stay out of trouble for two seconds, can you?"

"_How_ is this my fault?"

"Are you hurt?"

Luke shook his head. "No, but Han—"

"What's that?" Leia's head swivelled down, gaze zeroing in on what Luke assumed was the sword on the floor, their bond exploding with brisk waves of emotion.

"A sword," Han drawled, clutching his bleeding arm.

"A _poisoned_ sword, so don't touch it," Luke clarified.

She looked back at him, and her alarm nearly deafened him. "Did it touch you? Did it draw blood—are you—"

"I'm _fine_, Leia." He huffed. "Please, Han took the shot for me and now his arm is injured, can we get him to the medbay before you freak out?"

"Yes," said a new voice from the doorway. Luke sighed again—in relief, this time, as his mother strode in to assess the situation. "Luke, Leia, kindly escort Captain Solo to the medbay to get his injury looked at—it doesn't look too deep, but it never hurts to check. Chewbacca, since you're the strongest here, could you help me take Qi'ra to the nearest holding cells? I won't be able to handle her alone."

Chewie growled something. Luke assumed it was a yes, because he lumbered over and hoisted Qi'ra's limp body upwards.

"C'mon, Han, let's go," Luke said, then paused. "And. . . thank you. For what you did. I would've died."

"Well." Han smirked a little despite himself. "I was your bodyguard for a bit. I guess habits die hard."

"I can't say I'm not glad of that," Luke said, then led his friend away.

* * *

Palpatine sensed it when his order failed, and Qi'ra was compromised. His wrinkled lips turned down in a frown; he cast out his senses to latch onto her mind, her laughable Force sensitivity and familiarity with the dark side making it easy enough for him to grasp—especially after all the work he'd put into her. He seized that connection, and saw—

A foiled assassination attempt.

He frowned. He'd known that she would have to expose himself in order to kill Luke—known that whether Vader was colluding with the Rebels or not, she would be lost to him the moment Luke died. He'd known that. It was a price he would pay, if it meant that traitor, that insolent little boy, was finally _dead_.

But Luke was not dead. Someone—someone insignificant had stepped in, had dared to interfere in his justice.

The dark side roiled around him, stoked by his rage.

But it was pacified by one thing, and one thing alone:

Qi'ra had been caught because she had failed.

She had not been caught because Vader had tattled to his wife and children.

Which meant, Palpatine thought with a smile, Vader was still _his_.

And that. . . that was something he could work with.


	57. Tenth Shadow

**This chapter was written after I watched, and contains minor allusions to, Clone Wars Season 7, so if you're still being ruthless about avoiding spoilers, be warned.**

* * *

If Leia was being honest with herself, Qi'ra's _trial_ was a mockery of the thing. It was held in a similar room to where they'd debated so fiercely about going to Scarif, only this time it was not packed with people of ranks high and low: the only people it was packed with were Leia herself; Luke, gripping her hand tightly; Han and Chewie, as witnesses; and the council themselves. Bail and Padmé and all the senators and generals, who'd fought so fiercely against her brother's plan and now reaped all the benefits of it, ringed the table in the centre. Their expressions were grave.

Qi'ra stood at one end of it, hands in binders behind her back, stiff but regal in her arrogance. A black eye consumed the left side of her face like a juice stain, from cheekbone to eyebrow; her eyelid swelled like the berry itself.

When Leia had first met Qi'ra, in all her insecurities she'd thought that this perfect, poised, polished woman looked like Padmé in a way Leia never could—that she was everything Leia wasn't, the trusted Rebel fighter that she was a disappointment in comparison too.

Now, looking at her. . . Leia couldn't see any resemblance to Padmé at all.

"We've heard the testimonies from Skywalker, Solo and Chewbacca on what happened," Padmé said, calmly and clearly. Luke squeezed Leia's hand, and she relaxed a tautness in her shoulders she hadn't even realised was there. She must have sighed, or made a noise, because Qi'ra's turned her head to her from across the room and _glared_.

Leia glared right back, and squeezed her brother's hand tighter. Qi'ra had nearly killed Luke.

Thinking about it again sent lava pouring through her veins. She'd _only just_ got Luke _back_, Qi'ra _knew_ the wreck she'd been without him, _and she'd tried to_—

_Leia._ Luke squeezed her hand again.

Leia let out a breath. _I hate her. Who knows how many people died because—_

_I know_. He released her hand to feel for her shoulder, then lay his arm around it, like the comforting weight of a familiar blanket. _She's done awful things, she's worked for awful people. I... I hate her too. But I feel sorry for her as well._

Leia let out a breath. _Can you sense anything about her?_

_Not much. She's closed off. But... enough that I feel sorry for her._

_Your ability to sense emotions is always going to get you in trouble._

_Heh. Yes. _Then his voice hardened again. _But she's about to face justice now, and you can't hold onto your hatred for her any longer._

She snorted quietly. _How much time have you been spending with Yoda since you got here?_

_Far too much, I'm sure. He's got some decent ideas._

_And some terrible ones._

She felt him shrug, and tilted her head to lay it on his chest. She could hear his heartbeat. _And some terrible ones._

"You stand accused of espionage on behalf of the Empire, and the Emperor himself, including leaking the location of the Rebel base at Yavin, knowledge of the attack on Cymoon One, and of various rescue missions, among other miscellaneous pieces of intelligence," Padmé said, "and finally of attempted murder of a Rebel. The council has seen the evidence for all of these crimes, and stands unanimously agreed of your guilt, but now we ask if there is anything you would like to say on your own behalf."

Qi'ra smiled, a little ironically. "Do I get to know what my sentence is?"

"A lifetime in Sunspot Prison," Bail informed her, folding his hands in front of him neatly.

She shifted her gaze to him. It was the first time she'd got confirmation that Bail was a part of the Rebellion, Leia was pretty sure—but now, that information was useless to her without a way to pass it on. They'd found her communications equipment when they searched her quarters.

"A perfect place," one of the senators—Jebel, Leia thought—spat, "for a criminal like you."

The arch of Qi'ra's eyebrow was perfect, precise and damning. "Says the Rebel senator," she drawled. "I'm a criminal. Always have been. You can ask Han, your _good guy_," she jerked her chin at Solo, who suddenly looked uncomfortable, "exactly where we came from. I joined Crimson Dawn because I had no choice. I joined the Empire after Maul was killed because I had no choice. At least I knew how to get rewarded for my skills—rewards that _weren't_ a slow, agonising death at the hands of Imperial interrogators." A pointed glance at. . . well, every Rebel in the room.

Leia bristled. She doubted Qi'ra noticed.

"You're all hoping to win. I don't care who wins. This is not that kind of a game, and I'm just trying to stay in it for as long as I can. I don't like the choices I was forced to make. I'm not proud of what I have done. But I won't apologise for coming farther than any other scumrat could have."

Solo shifted awkwardly where he stood. The bulky bandages around his shoulder seemed to weigh him down the same way the silence did in the room.

"Everyone serves someone," she continued, and her gaze was _fixed_ on Solo. It was a challenge; it was a lesson. "The person I serve will crush you all soon enough. No matter how many times you cry _freedom_, that will never change."

Leia thought Solo might have muttered something, thought he might have flicked his gaze between Luke, Leia, and Qi'ra and muttered, "You're wrong."

But she couldn't be sure.

So she burst out herself: "Then why bother trying to kill my brother?"

The council glared at her, but she kept her own glower firmly fixed on Qi'ra. "If we're all going to die anyway."

Qi'ra shrugged. It was _that_ which killed Leia, the utter apathy there. Had she really hardened herself to the reality of her actions that much, that she just didn't care?

Of course she had, Leia thought. Her vision from Jedha came back to her in startling clarity.

Of course she had. Leia would've too, in time. Leia probably would've been sent to spy, to fight, to do Palpatine's dirty work in exactly the same way, if she'd stayed.

If... if she hadn't taken the risk and trusted Sabé, and her mother, and Ahsoka, to forgive her for what she had already done.

For a moment, she thought that was her own black-eyed face staring back at her.

"He killed Maul. He killed Crimson Dawn, and set me on this path," she said. "He drove me to the Emperor, whose last message to me before you confiscated my equipment was to make sure Luke Skywalker died for his crimes, however possible." Luke shuddered next to her; Leia sent waves of. . . she didn't even know, but she hoped it was reassurance, down their bond. "I didn't enjoy it. But I didn't dislike it."

_Because I broke free of our masters, _Luke murmured, _and she did not._

"I think that's all we need to hear about that," Padmé said quietly. Leia felt a brief stab of sympathy for her mother. It was horrible enough as it was, condemning a woman she'd worked with for so long as a traitor, and now they were talking about the attempted murder of her son. . .

Mon Mothma thumped something—a gavel—on the table. Leia wondered where they'd got a _gavel_ from. "Qi'ra, you are sentenced to be imprisoned in the Sunspot facility. Guards," she inclined her head, "take her away."

"Wait," Padmé said—still quietly, but her voice carried. "You. . . were aware that you could have sought asylum with us, the moment you arrived, Qi'ra? You would have been vetted, and assessed, but if you had confessed to your mission you would have been free."

"Were you not _listening_?" Qi'ra tried to straighten up again but the guards had seized her arms to take her away and not released them, so all she could do was spit: "_No one_ is free. And you would not have accepted me once you'd learned everything I was forced to do, from the moment I joined the White Worms on Corellia. I was a member of the _syndicates_." She shook her head. "I don't trust the _forgiveness_ of the self-righteous."

Padmé smiled a little sadly.

"Nevertheless," Luke called after her as she was led out. "I forgive you."

_Definitely been spending too much time with Master Yoda,_ Leia grumbled. Her heart wasn't in it.

Luke ignored her. And Leia couldn't help but notice Qi'ra's face, stricken, _confused_, just before the door slammed shut behind her.

* * *

They were sent out of the room shortly after that, and while Luke made small talk with the pilots—apparently he _had_ been pretty friendly with Wedge, Biggs and Hobbie before that minor detail of selling them out to Pryce, and it was easy for them to find their camaraderie again—Leia. . . wandered around the ship. Wondering if there was anything she was needed for. She'd often sought out Qi'ra, in this time, but. . .

Well.

So she just wandered for a while, not wanting to interrupt Luke's bonding time, until they were both summoned back to that meeting room later that day. All the other councillors had filed out, leaving Padmé alone in the room, the harsh bright lighting from all angles painting her face without shadows. She looked pale and bare and tired.

Luke and Leia glanced at each other before they went in, Luke gripping Leia's hand tightly with his left, his cane with his right. She found it fascinating to watch the way he used it, fanning it out ahead of him where he worried there might be non-living obstacles that didn't register in the Force, but always careful not to bash either of their legs.

Padmé smiled at them broadly when they came in, though, and the moment the door closed behind them she said, "They've approved Operation Eclipse. We're to get your father on board, set up Erso and Andor with the demolitions, then go. As soon as possible—within the fortnight, if at all feasible."

"That's great," Luke said brightly. "When will we all be briefed?"

"Well." Padmé twisted her lips. "_This_ is the briefing for the two of you—there were intense debates on how Palpatine's death was to be accomplished—"

"Once the shields are down, blasting the Palace until it's dust could always be reliable way of obliterating him."

Luke huffed a laugh at her dark humour but Padmé was not amused. "That risks too many innocent lives, it's been decided. Within the Palace, and without."

"And we'd also have no confirmation of his death," Luke said tactically.

"Yes. That too." Padmé spread her hands on the table and stared across at them. "So our plan is to send in the Force-users—_all of them_, including you, Luke, if you think you're up to it by then—to confront him."

"He'll have the Inquisitors," Luke said.

"If we take some troops they're nothing we can't handle," Leia shot back.

"Yes." Padmé nodded. "And you _will_ have some ground troops assisting you. And. . ." She rolled the word around her tongue like one of those sour sweets you could buy from the street vendors on Coruscant. Leia had seen kids daring each other to eat them, and tease the ones who spat it out rather than swallow. "_If_ at all possible. . . we want to capture Palpatine alive, anyway."

Silence reigned.

Then Leia said, "What the _f_—"

"I _know_ it's not ideal," Padmé rushed on. "But we are building a _republic_ here, and while our previous republic had the death penalty for serious crimes. . . many think that that is not something which should be resurrected—hence Sunspot Prison, and why Qi'ra is being sent there even now. He will be taken prisoner, and he may still die of injuries, or suicide, or escape attempts, or they may be enough people clamouring for his execution that we _have_ to kill him. But until then, we do not want him dead. We are not the Empire. We are better."

"You're _idiots_," Leia said.

Luke said, his voice tight, "Leia's right. There's no way you can hold him, and he deserves to die."

"If necessary, of course you will have to kill him in the heat of the moment. No one is disputing that. But we do want you to _try_ to take him alive." She hesitated, then added quietly, "If only so we can say that we tried."

"To look like the good guys?" Leia snapped.

Her mother's gaze was steady on hers.

"Palpatine has flooded the galaxy with propaganda about his greatness for nearly twenty years," she said softly. "Suppressed all opposition, practically started _cult followings_ in some areas. A trial would be the ideal place for him to be brought to justice, and his crimes aired in front of the _entire galaxy_, so the Republic cannot be decried as invaders, or this attack cannot be seen as a bloody coup."

"He is a liar and a manipulator and a _powerful_ Force wielder," Luke spat. Leia jerked back at his intensity, but no one deserved to hate Palpatine more than her brother. "If you leave him alive, if you _put him on holo_, he _will_ turn your newly won galaxy against you. If he doesn't escape first and rally an army to crush you for good."

"Crush _us_ for good," Padmé corrected quietly.

Luke paused.

"Leia," he said. "Back me up."

"Luke's right," she said immediately. "There's too much pro-Imperial feeling in the Senate to _risk_ keeping him alive!"

"And _that is exactly why we must_." Padmé pushed away from the holo table and paced, her hands knotted behind her back in a gesture that reminded Leia vaguely of her father. "We _need_ to expose him for what he has done."

"The galaxy _knows_ what he has done. They lived through it."

"Not everything," Padmé said. For a moment, she looked almost haunted. "I doubt even you two know everything."

Luke clenched his jaw. Leia squeezed his hand tight enough that she felt pain spark along their bond.

Padmé said sharply, "So _yes_, Leia. We _are_ doing this to look like the good guys. And we _are_ doing this. Ahsoka, Yoda and the Ghost crew have already been briefed."

Then she took another breath, and Leia prepared herself for the last blow.

"There is also," she said, "the matter of succession."

Leia held her breath. What. . .?

"After great deliberation and debate, the council want you to helm the Empire in the wake of his death, as his official, believable heir. Building the Republic from the ground up will take years, it will be difficult work, and it will take all sorts of cooperation. The idea is that having a legitimate leader—and your father to back her up—will make everything easier. Less bloody."

"And I suppose there's also the fact that this was one of Father's requirements, when he agreed to cooperate with the Rebels?" Leia asked. Her heart was pounding, but she ignored it. She needed to focus, in this conversation.

"That too," Padmé conceded. "There was. . . a great deal of debate about this, within Command. But this is our decision; this is the simplest way for everyone. The Republic turned into the Empire. Under the right hands. . ." She nodded at Leia—no, at Luke _and_ Leia— "Why can the Empire not turn into the Republic?"

Leia glanced at Luke. He felt her gaze on his face and shrugged. "What? It makes sense."

"Does it?"

"I know I am damning you to years and years of work," Padmé said gently. "And if you like, you can abdicate and let anyone else share the burden. You can live in peace, and be nor—"

"I already gave you my answer on that," Leia snapped. "I cannot live in peace until we are _finished_. If that takes years and years and years, so be it." Then she swallowed. "And I have _never_ been normal. There is absolutely no hope of that for me."

Luke shook his head. "Nor for me," he echoed.

When Padmé looked at them, she blinked tears out of her eyes.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I tried to give you the most normal childhood I could, when I left you on Tatooine, but. . ."

"It was the will of the Force," Leia said. Stars, she usually _hated_ those words whenever her father talked them at her, but now. . . they were strangely soothing.

Luke nodded. "You did your best. There was nothing you could have done."

Padmé smiled. She did not move to wipe away her tears.

"Then," she said. "May the Force be with us."

Both Leia and Luke heard what was unspoken:

Nothing could save them if it was not.

* * *

Vader received the comm when he was in the bacta tank, but at that chime he immediately demanded that he be taken out, treatment complete or not complete. That—

That was _Padmé_ contacting him.

_Padmé_.

He—

He clenched his fists in their gloves when he finally strode out of his personal medbay; if he was anyone else, he might've been trembling. He went to kneel when the hologram lit up, that Imperial cog used for encrypted transmissions hovering over him in place of where his master's face usually sat, before he remembered this was _not_ his master he was speaking to. But he kept kneeling anyway, when the Rebel did start speaking: the voice was encrypted and unrecognisable, but he knew that speech pattern. He knew those words she'd chosen—and he remembered them from the other day, when Leia had been there, as well.

He listened attentively as his wife spoke, latched onto her every word, trying not to let his mind wander as he tried to picture what she must look like as she said them. And when she stopped speaking, stopped describing that reckless, ridiculous plan that was even less likely to succeed than some of his own from the Clone Wars, than anything he knew Luke and Leia would have concocted. . .

All there was left to do was say yes.

His family were going to do it anyway, and they would be slaughtered without him. He didn't bother to keep his adoration out of his voice as he agreed and discussed the minutiae, but knew somehow that his vocoder and the transmission would steal it away anyway.

The Rebels would trigger the explosives and take down the power all over the planet. Then, once the shields were down, before the planetary authorities had the time or ability to scramble to fix it, the combined fleets of the Rebellion, Vader and Thrawn would attack. The party of Jedi and as many ground troops as possible would go down to the surface with two express purposes: seizing the planet for themselves.

And _capturing the Emperor_.

Vader winced at that. _Capture_. Padmé was. . . idealistic as ever. No wonder Luke had got it from her.

But there was nothing he could do to change her mind. He knew that. So he'd have to either hope Leia had more sense than her mother and brother combined and take him out despite that order, or. . .

Or, well, Vader would have to get involved himself.

_"Do you pledge yourself to this plan and to see it succeed, Lord Vader?"_ Padmé asked sternly. For a moment, he was glad of the encryption: he didn't think he'd be able to handle hearing _her_ voice say _Lord Vader_ with such a. . . disapproving tone.

"I do," he said. "Grand Admiral Thrawn will, as well."

_"Good. The date set is two weeks from now. Be ready to attack Coruscant then, or all may fail, Vader."_

Vader was silent for three rasps of his respirator. Then he said, "You can count on me, Padmé."

She disconnected before they had to confront anything beyond that.

It didn't matter. He'd see her soon. Soon. . .

He'd see them all again. Luke, Leia, Padmé.

Soon Leia would be Empress.

A faint smile graced his lips at the image—Leia taking the throne, her brother on her right and _both_ her parents supporting her. . .

If Padmé had ruled the Empire, it would have been a far more glorious thing than Palpatine's had ever managed to be. And though he had no doubt that she'd clung to her dream of a republic, that that was why she'd fought against him in the Rebellion for so long, that dream would take a while to achieve, even if Leia was a true believer in it when she took the throne. They would soon realise, during her brief rule, that they were the best hand to rule the galaxy.

Vader's entire family had betrayed him, but now he would get them back. And he _would_ get them back, whether they ceded the Empire to the Republic or not, but if he was lucky. . .

He would get everything he'd ever wanted.

And that was when his comm starting chiming again.

This time, he _had_ to drop into a kneeling position, accepting the call immediately.

Palpatine's massive, hooded head materialised in the air before him and Vader kept his own head _down_, shields durasteel. Palpatine could not find out. _Palpatine could not find out—_

_"Lord Vader,"_ he declared. _"I fear the Rebels are about to mount an attack on us."_

_What._

_How—?_

"Have you had word from your spy, my master?" If so, the Rebels were _fools_, he had _told them_ her name and if they hadn't eliminated her—

_"I have not,"_ Palpatine said, lips twisting. Vader tried not to less his shoulders sag—so. They weren't _that_ stupid. Padmé's voice was not drowned out by all the idiots'. _"But shortly after you informed me of the Sixth Sister's treachery, I had a vision. Of Coruscant going dark, of Rebel ships in orbit and your children walking through the capital with lit lightsabers."_

Of course he had.

Just like that, all of Vader's hope seeped out of him. His master was all knowing.

His master would know about this too, and he would prepare for it.

_"This will be an ideal opportunity to recapture your children, Lord Vader," _Palpatine went on. _"I do not know any precise dates or times of the attack, but from the vision, I can deduce that they will come—presumably with the Jedi with whom they have thrown in their lot—and they will try to kill me."_

Vader ground his teeth, and said nothing.

_"Of course, that is not a battle they will win and I will do my best to take them alive, but. . . with the space battle, between the other Jedi and the Inquisitors who will have to go to fight them, there may not be enough resources to contain such powerful Force users. We would need the space battle to be over swiftly if we are to take them alive._

_"Fortunately," _he said, _"I have a solution."_

Vader waited patiently. He had faith in Luke and Leia, as much as merely _thinking_ about this sent his heart defying the artificial pacemakers in his chest, and besides—

If they couldn't do it, he'd be there.

He'd be there.

He would go to do it himself, whether it killed him or not.

_"You remember Anaxes, I am sure?"_ Palpatine raised an eyebrow. _"You fought quite fiercely to defend it during the Clone Wars, if I remember correctly. It was a highly useful site of military shipyards, only a short trip from Coruscant along the Perlemian Route."_

"I do," Vader said. Rex, Echo, the Bad Batch, his conversation about the whole incident with Padmé and Obi-Wan—

_I hope you at least told Padmé I said hello._

"I remember it was destroyed in a cataclysmic natural disaster."

_"It was. And the shipyards, similar to Fort Anaxes itself, were moved to the asteroid belt that survived that disaster."_ Palpatine smiled. _"I have a whole new fleet of ships being constructed there—of a class with the _Executor_, in fact. When this Rebel attack comes, I will contact you, and you will travel to the system to commandeer them. Not all are ready, of course—I commissioned them only a few short months before the unveiling of the _Executor_ herself at Kuat, nearly a year ago—but those you can bring would certainly change the tide of the battle, and only accelerate our victory."_

Vader let himself listen, let himself commit the details to memory—this would be important information to pass on, they should be able to take out the shipyards before the attack if they were fortunate—until Palpatine said:

_"Then, once the twins have been captured, Leia can be reinstated as heir. The pernicious influence of the Jedi will have been silenced, the Rebellion will have been crushed, and we can bring your twins back to the true, powerful nature of the Force."_

And Vader _froze_.

Because. . . he was right.

If he fought against the Rebellion one last time, used the combined forces of his, Thrawn's and the Anaxes fleets to wipe out the dissident voice of the Republic and the Jedi, took the main leaders prisoner and spared Padmé that way, then killed Palpatine during the attack, as he had no doubt he'd be able to. . .

He would have his family again.

He would have his family, _they_ could rule the galaxy, could be made to see reason, and no Jedi or Rebel scum would ever be able to take them from him again.

_"What do you say, Lord Vader?"_

He lifted his head to look his master in the eye. "It will work, my master."

_"Good. Good. Do you have any inkling of when the attack will be?"_

_Two weeks_ itched on his tongue, but he still buried it deep down and said, "None, my master." He couldn't admit to his own betrayal—that could ruin everything.

_"A shame. But it is coming within the next month, I feel, and we will be ready for it. Ensure you are in or near the Core for that time, and prepare for the attack. The Sith Empire will reign eternal,"_ he promised, _"with our heirs sitting on the throne."_

Vader bowed his head again. "It will be done, Master," he said, and only felt a twinge of guilt.

His children had betrayed him. They could not fault him for this.

Not when this would give them everything they'd ever dreamed of.

* * *

"Skilled at meditating, you are not, young Skywalker."

Luke huffed a laugh and kept his eyes closed, even as he felt Yoda tap his shin with his stick. "It's never been one of my strengths, no."

Yoda chuckled, in that squeaky little way he did, and put his cane down again. "If meditate you will not, talk, you can. Of what do you think?"

"Mainly the upcoming plan," he said, making sure to take deep breaths. Let the Force flow through him the way the oxygen did: in, out, in, out, in, out. "The culmination of Operation Eclipse. Everything. . ."

"Ah, yes. Accompanying you on that mission, I will be."

Luke fought not to raise an eyebrow. He'd known that they'd have other Jedi with them—but Yoda had never struck him as the most durable fighter, as certain as he was that he _could_ hold his own. He'd fought Palpatine and survived once upon a time, after all.

Still, he'd assumed it would be Kanan and Ezra and Ahsoka. Not necessarily Yoda.

Yoda seemed to pick up on those thought, because he rapped his shin again. "Need as many Jedi as you can get, you do," he scolded.

"We do, Master Yoda," Luke said, smiling. "Forgive me."

"Worries, you have though, no?"

Luke grimaced a little. "No. I trust my father. He'll pull through for us—we'll win."

"So certain, are you?"

"Yes," Luke said stubbornly. If nothing else in this dark, doomed galaxy was true, that was: his father loved his family, and they could count on him. "I'm absolutely certain."

Yoda. . . paused for a moment, robes whispering as he shifted his arms. "Nine hundred years old, I am. Seen many horrors, I have," he said. "But. . . faith I have, in your father, also. Lost to darkness, you were not. Wrong, I was, about that. Wrong, my teachings and my instincts may be, about this. Love you, your father does—that I know."

Luke smiled. "I know." Then he teased, "You're _nine hundred years old_?"

Yoda just harrumphed, but a familiar presence outside the door saved Luke from the rest of his displeasure.

He pushed himself to his feet and swept up his cane, the handle almost as familiar as his lightsaber hilt by now.

"Interesting students, you and your sister are," Yoda said to his back. "Pleased, I am, that met you, I have."

Luke smiled, and made his way just outside.

Han was leaning against the corridor wall, _screaming_ awkwardness in the Force; he scuffed his boot along the polished floor in an odd, regular rhythm that Luke found strangely soothing. He stopped next to him, planting his cane and leaning on it dramatically, a smirk twitching at the corner of his lips.

Han scoffed when he saw it. "What're you smiling about?"

"You're about to tell me you and Chewie decided to hang around for the battle, aren't you?"

"You said you weren't gonna read my mind!"

"And I'm not. I just know you well enough, by now."

Han scoffed again. . . then scratched the back of his neck. "Yeah. Well, you ain't wrong—Chewie convinced me."

_Uh huh_.

Han damn near stomped his foot when he saw the amused look on Luke's face, but he restrained himself, which Luke thought was very mature of him.

"Yeah, well, Chewie and I'll need a ship to fight in the space battle," he said awkwardly.

"I'm sure the Rebellion can—"

"I don't want any of your _Rebel ships_." Han pushed himself off the wall and straightened up. "We got our ship. I stored it with an old friend on Takodana when I went to bust Chewie out of Kessel—the first time, that is, before I met you. It's been a while, but she'll be there. And I'm betting our old friend wants the rest of her money for watching it."

"You didn't pay her up front?"

He snorted. "Of course not. She's a pirate queen, and I'm a friend, not a fool."

Luke grinned a little. "Well, I wish you a safe flight to Takodana. I'll see you when you get back. Eight days until the attack."

"Eight days," Han echoed. "Yeah, I'll see you then."

* * *

Incidentally, when Luke walked Han to the hangar and waved goodbye to him and Chewie as they left, he also found Mara sitting on one of the crates in the corner of the hangar, staring out at the patch of stars visible through the shields. He went to sit beside her.

She stiffened when he did. He scooted away slightly, but she just grunted and made a dismissive gesture that hit him in the knee, so he stopped where he was.

He said, "Sorry I haven't really spoken to you yet—it's been a busy few days. How are you adjusting?"

She fiddled with the sleeve of the clothes she'd been given—identical fatigues to the ones he was wearing, by the sound of it—and didn't answer for a while. He just let himself enjoy the whoosh of air in and out of the hangar, from the air vents and the repulsorlifts and the background chatter of the engines and their pilots for a moment. It relaxed him.

"The few hours I spent in a cell were not that pleasant," she drawled. "But they vetted me quickly and let me out. Don't have clearance for most of the ship, but I'm not in a cage. Your endorsement apparently went a long way, Skywalker." She cut him a sharp glance.

He shrugged. "A few highly placed people trust me."

"And you trust me?"

"Of course."

She scoffed. "_Of course_?"

He took her hand. It fell limp with shock for a moment, but she didn't pull away; after a moment, she gripped his back. "Of course."

"I handed you over to Palpatine after Scarif. And you—"

She gestured.

"I what?"

She huffed. "Your eyes. Solo told me about them."

He squeezed her hand. "That wasn't your fault."

"I didn't _help_. And you still trust me? How is that rational?"

"You're asking me to be rational?" he joked. He feigned disappointment. "I'm afraid that's something I can't do."

She did laugh at that. "I've noticed. You agreed to help an Inquisitor when there was nothing in it for you."

"Uh huh."

"You broke a Rebel scientist out by turning him in."

"Indeed."

"You took on one of the most heavily guarded information facilities in the galaxy _on your own_."

"And I _succeeded_."

He could sense her scepticism, practically see her raised eyebrow. "Did you?"

He shrugged. "The Death Star plans got sent, thanks to a good friend of mine." He nudged her. "I succeeded."

"You were tortured."

"I escaped."

"_Vader let you go_."

He shrugged again. "I got through to my father. That's another success I can count."

"You got through to me."

He turned his head to meet her gaze. He could feel it on his own, could remember the exact shade of her irises, hard and opaque, glinting like two discs of. . .

Well. Of jade.

He smiled. "I'm glad."

Then he turned his face back to the bustle of the hangar as he tentatively asked, "Will you be there, in eight days?"

If she didn't know about the operation already, he wouldn't tell her, but she nodded. "I will," she said. "That Togruta—Tano—asked me herself."

"We're going to face Palpatine."

"We're going to _kill _Palpatine."

"Our orders are to capture," he said—a little bitterly.

Mara gave him another look, then, and Luke was suddenly aware of someone else who'd strolled into the hangar. Leia was hovering by the door, watching them both—watching their _still entwined hands_—with oceans of amusement, and he couldn't bring himself to acknowledge her.

"Yeah, well, I'm willing to jeopardise my standing with these Rebels if it means seeing him dead," Mara said. She looked straight at his sister then as well.

Luke followed her a gaze, and winced.

When she murmured, "And I don't think I'm the only one," he couldn't refute it.


	58. Operation Eclipse

Everything was proceeding as he had foreseen.

The Palace bustled around him. Prisoners in the cells far below him screamed and agonised, and fed his power. Terrified servants moved through the hallways like blood cells through veins, and fed his power. The courtiers at this ball he was hosting spun and twirled in eddying circles around the focal points of prestige, hated each other for what they did not have, and fed his power.

This ballroom dazzled with light and ostentatious colour. Humans in heavy-set dress, bejewelled and embroidered and constricting. The pain of pinched feet and stiff corsets added to the stench of darkness that curled around the lavish room and Palpatine smiled as he drank it in. His courtiers were far too easy to manipulate, but they were an endless source of amusement nonetheless.

He closed his eyes to better savour it and leaned back on his throne. Soon, once he had the Skywalkers—his _favourite_ source of amusement—back, it would be time to formally introduce Leia to the court as his heir, and revel in the thick mix of envy, fawning, hatred, sycophancy she'd then have to deal with. There was nothing like the upper tiers of the Empire to reintroduce a Force-sensitive to the dark side: one had to be ruthless to survive, and it was easy to fall into familiar patterns of hatred of others, hatred of the self, lost in the deceptive luxury and ignorant of the outside galaxy.

His courtiers were idiots. But they were useful idiots, all the same.

It was because he had his eyes closed that the first thing he noticed was the panic and the screams, rather than the source.

Then he opened his eyes to darkness.

The lights were out. The courtiers had stopped dancing, the music had stopped playing, and now fear drenched the room. Palpatine took a moment to savour it.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could look over the Coruscanti cityscape: glittering when he'd last looked, now as dark and still as the depths of space. Dawn was a long way off.

If Palpatine had his way, dawn would never come.

It appeared his demon twins would be returned to him sooner than he anticipated.

"Send a message to Lord Vader," he ordered, rising from his throne. His red guards fell in beside him automatically, a few of them going to usher the courtiers out of the room and into some safe bunker where they'd no doubt be forced to hole up and stay out of his way. There were more important things afoot. "Inform him it is time."

He looked out the windows again, taking in the sight of his capital wreathed in a physical darkness to reflect its spiritual state. Ships were appearing just beyond the atmosphere, lights flashing as they exchanged blows with the defence fleet. Other lights lit up as more ships arrived, too, and grew brighter, and nearer, and _he knew them_. . .

He smiled.

Now was the time.

"And ensure there's a. . . _welcoming party_ for my Jedi when they come to the door."

* * *

It all happened at once: one minute they were pacing the bridge, standing tense and terrified and staring out at the endless threads of hyperspace, then the console beeped to declare their imminent arrival and Jyn had sent the signal to detonate the dormant charges still sitting on the central and palace power grids.

Then they were _there_.

Darkness punched her in the gut and Leia nearly doubled over with the shock of it, panting. Luke caught her arm before she could, unaffected. Of course—he'd spent far more time in this cesspit than she had; it was far more familiar to him.

Another stab of regret for ever leaving him. Another stab she wanted to dole out to Palpatine.

Coruscant, the bright centre of the galaxy, was bright no more. The shining jewel had ceased shining, just briefly, dark as a black dwarf, and the Rebel flagship headed straight for the night side of the planet, where the Imperial Palace was. Every shield was down.

"You ready to go?" Luke asked, still gripping her arm.

She shook him off and straightened up. "Absolutely."

When they launched the _Hidden Star_ from the belly of _Home One_, it was into a bloodbath.

TIEs and X-wings whipped back and forth trailing nets of smoke. Leia was grateful sound never travelled in a vacuum, or the racket would be unbearable—when she seized the controls and dived for the dark planet below, no less than five TIEs made to give chase.

Then they pulled back.

The ships clumped around the troop transports instead and Luke and Leia were left to sail cleanly through the atmosphere, past the explosions and lights and death. Someone was expecting them.

When Leia glanced to the side to mention as much to her brother, his brow was furrowed, face turned up towards the skies.

"Where is Father?" he asked. "I don't sense him. Where's the _Executor_?"

Leia reached out herself, but she already knew Luke was right: the Rebels had reverted to realspace to face this battle alone.

Vader was nowhere to be seen.

* * *

Whether their father was there or not, they still had a job to do, and Leia landed the _Star_ safely just outside the Palace. Luke walked forwards until he could tap his cane against the bottom step, automatically tilting his head up to regard a long, long fleet of stairs he couldn't see.

He couldn't see, but he could sense at the top. . .

"Inquisitors," he said.

Leia snorted. "Of—"

"—_course_," groaned another voice. Luke turned his head towards the source; Kanan and Ezra had arrived. Mara trailed after them. "I don't why I didn't expect this."

"Why _didn't_ you expect this?" Luke asked teasingly.

"Not everyone knows exactly how the Emperor thinks, Luke," Ezra shot back. "I'm not even sure I'd want to."

"Trust me, you don't." He smiled. "Glad to see you made it."

"Of course I made it."

"Wanna bet I can take out more Inquisitors than you?"

"You wish." Luke heard a hum, and smirked to himself, trying to imagine the dramatic pose Ezra had adopted with his green lightsaber to hammer his point home. "I'll leave you in the dust."

"Suit yourself. We'll see how that goes."

Ezra huffed when he saw Luke's grin. "Nice cane, by the way. Where's your lightsaber?"

Luke smiled, and shifted his grip on the handle of his cane.

"_Oh_."

"Are we going to attack them or not?" Leia asked impatiently. "Because they clearly know we're here, we're the ones who have to run up all those stairs, and they're just waiting for us at the top."

"We're just waiting for Ahsoka—" Kanan cut off as another ship landed, and deposited Ahsoka and Yoda on the ground. Luke could hear the _tap, tap, tap_ of his stick from here and smiled to himself. "Now we're ready."

Ahsoka lit her lightsabers, eyeing the Inquisitors grimly. "March on the Temple," she said.

"March on the Palace," Leia corrected.

Luke lit his own lightsaber. He could feel the curious glances between his and Ahsoka's, but ignored them. "Shall we go, then?"

"The ground troops are going to give the order," Ahsoka said, tapping her comlink. "Any. . . second. . ."

They all looked back up at those steps. Luke tried not to imagine soldiers marching on the building he'd called a second home for so long, and wondered how the Jedi felt about it.

". . ._now_."

* * *

The clash of sabers, burn of his lungs and eddies of the dark and the light was all Luke knew. The Force was a firework around him and he _gave himself over_ to the fight; no idea how tall anyone was, no idea where the lines of the steps were, but he was the grandson of the Force itself and it was his ally here.

There were so many Inquisitors. _So many_, and he'd never known the exact numbers, never bothered to know or learn the changing titles and names as more slaughtered, more _were_ slaughtered, and more children were added to the eighteen year bloodbath. Mara had been one of the more constant ones, easier to remember—the only human, for a long time, constantly sixth and never moving to seventh or fifth or further, and now she wasn't an Inquisitor at all. He didn't know the others' names or their titles, or how they fought, or how they tried to practice whatever love their training left in them.

He just knew, from far too many training sessions he'd witnessed going wrong, how they died.

He just knew they were trying to kill him.

He just knew that they had been the innocent children of the Force once, raised on a diet of darkness and destruction, and now he was attacking them for a lifestyle they had not chosen.

But he was not foolish enough to stop.

Once defeated, they would be stunned and put in Force-suppressant binders and. . . shoved into a closet or whatever until Palpatine was secure. They would deal with them later.

Lost hands, lost limbs. . . He did not want to kill them, especially not if Palpatine would be left alive by the end of this. But they couldn't leave them in a fit state to make things difficult for them.

A flash of warning from the Force; he ducked and heard a saber whirr as it _skimmed_ right over his head—

_Go!_ someone screamed in his head suddenly. He flinched, but it was Leia—just Leia, and of course he listened to her. _Ahsoka and the others are going to handle them, but we have to _go_. We have to make sure Palpatine doesn't escape, and we have to distract him, fight him, and wait for them to catch up. You know we can't capture him alone._

_I know._ A horrible crash as his lightsaber lanced off an Inquisitor's, who responded by engaging that spinning hilt and advancing on him menacingly. He stuck the saber through the centre of the hilt, right into their chest, and heard them choke on it. _Alright, let's go—_

Someone threw him to the ground.

He gasped for air, pain ringing up his elbow as it bashed against the stairs and jerked his head up—there was an Inquisitor there, a lightsaber above his head coming down, a thick _hatred_ spewing from him—

And then there was a saber through his gut and a hand on Luke's wrist, pulling him back up again. His lightsaber was lost somewhere in the chaos; he waved his hand and he flew back to him.

"Stay on your feet, Skywalker," Mara snapped. "Or I'll be the one beating you in our next training round."

Luke blinked. "You wish."

She just whacked his shoulder. "Go help your sister. We'll handle it here."

"You feeling up to it?"

He hated himself immediately for the concern in his voice. It wasn't doubt, but it could sound like doubt, and _worrying_ wasn't a rational thing based on faith or lack thereof—

She gave him a shove, and tapped her lightsaber. He wondered briefly what it was—was it her old Inquisitor's one, somehow smuggled out with her? Was it a new one, gifted to her by the Jedi? Had she stolen one from one of her former brothers or sisters, here and now?—but it wasn't important.

"One blade unless I need two, right?" she quipped.

He grinned, and made to follow Leia.

The Palace was eerily empty as they ran through it—servants holed up in bunkers and barricaded in side passageways, nobles cowering in their rooms behind their guards, only the Inquisitors a line of defence between them and the outside world.

No, that wasn't true—he could sense fighting elsewhere in the Palace, where the gunships had dropped off the Rebel troops and the Imperials had risen to meet them. But there was no one in their way, here. Coruscant had truly become a planet of ghosts, only faint impressions of the living lingering at the back of his mind.

They reached the end of a corridor and Leia stabbed the button to summon the turbolift. The chime that came when it engaged broke the silence, sent shivers down his spine.

The doors slid open. They stepped in, in unison.

"He's expecting us," Luke murmured, the moment they began to move.

"Of course he's expecting us," she shot back. Her tone was stiff and so was her spine; he reached out a hand to interlock his fingers with hers. She relaxed marginally.

"We're gonna win," he said.

She blew out a breath. "Father's still not here."

"He'll come through."

"Palpatine is expecting us _for a reason_," she snapped. "Father— Father could have—"

"He hasn't," Luke soothed. "He's Father."

Leia looked at him, then down at their entwined hands; he could feel her gaze. Only then did he realise he'd given her the artificial one.

"We're going to win," he said. "We're going to win, because we're together. _Nothing_ is going to stop us."

The turbolift ground to a halt on the right floor and _dinged_, doors sliding open. They both stared out, clutching each other so tightly their fingers ached, down the long, long corridor. Behind antechambers and more antechambers and receiving rooms and double doors suspiciously empty of guards, sat the throne room and a self-satisfied, smug _bastard_ atop it. He was waiting for them.

"I hope you're right, Luke," Leia said, and let go of his hand to draw her saber instead.

* * *

Luke flinched when Leia blasted open the doors to the throne room, and Palpatine smiled to see that boy raise his face towards his master on the throne. It was good to know the boy still feared him, even if he kept his fear annoyingly at bay instead of using it; the look in his eyes, the cane in his hands, the injuries he'd sustained the last time he'd invoked his. . . _displeasure_, were testament enough to why he should be. Killing him would be satisfying—but he couldn't do it _yet_, or risk losing Leia.

The red guards lining the walls of the throne room lit their Force pikes but Palpatine just waved a hand. "Leave us."

Captain Vassic tensed at the order, but his loyalty eclipsed his doubts. He and all his men straightened, their pikes deactivating, and strode out through the side passages of the room.

Leia scowled. "You think you can take us yourself?"

"On the contrary, dear Leia." She snarled at the term, and he smiled. Still so angry, even with the Jedi's pernicious influence. "I know I cannot defeat the two of you—you have always been just as powerful as I envisioned you'd be, and together you are unstoppable."

Luke gave Leia a look. Always so reckless, that one—perhaps Palpatine shouldn't have been surprised to learn that his sudden return to the Empire was false; it was exactly the sort of suicidal stunt that boy would pull off.

As was charging and fighting Palpatine before he could talk them into a rut.

But it was no matter. He would not fight without Leia, and Leia would not fight until he'd revealed all his cards—until she'd played right into his hands.

He took _immense _pleasure in saying, "However, your father is the most powerful Force user in existence," he smiled, "and soon he will arrive on _my_ terms, with a fleet to crush what little is left of your _Rebel attack_ once my own forces have shattered them almost beyond repair. Or did you really think he would side with his traitorous spawn against the Empire he spent twenty years dedicating his life to?"

The words hit Luke like a physical blow. He staggered back, eyes blowing wide, lips forming words he never voiced. Leia put a hand on his shoulder so tightly it looked like claws.

She lit her lightsaber. Palpatine raised his eyebrows—he remembered the last time he'd fought someone with a purple lightsaber. The Force whispered that this night would be just as successful.

"You're lying," Luke snapped, and lit his own, tossing the wooden cane behind him for now to expose the blade. White. Interesting—even after their treason, they couldn't fit the narrow view the Jedi tried to force on them.

Of course not. They were his.

Luke took several aggressive steps forward despite his sister's indignant squawking and pointed his lightsaber at him like a curse. "_You're lying_, he wouldn't—"

"All your father wants," Palpatine soothed, standing from his throne to approach; he saw Luke flinch back as he sensed him move closer, "is for the two of you to achieve your potential. To _rule this galaxy_, as you were chosen by the Force to do—"

"The Force didn't choose us to do that," Leia spat. "An old man in a bathrobe did."

He let that slide—she'd suffer for it later. "Your father wants you free of the Jedi's influence and tyranny, free of the delusions they've installed in you. He will come, he will crush the Rebellion's petty attack, and then everything will go back to the way it was." He smiled at them. In fact, it might be even better than the way it was—with Leia newly indoctrinated into a galaxy far more complicated than the simple one she'd once believed in, with a raging, _personal_ hatred of the Rebels and Jedi who had so successfully led them astray, with no brother to love and link her to the light, highly aware of the agony her master could and would inflict on her should she fail again. . .

Luke had proven tough to break, alone. But he was sure that with the two of them together, to play against each other, with more effort and attention and _care_. . .

His demon twins would finally live up to their name. And after there was only one left, that demon would be a _scourge_.

But first, he would need them subdued.

Subdue them, tease out their hatred and anger—he would have to go about breaking them delicately, even he wanted Leia's hatred but also her loyalty; he didn't know how Luke would die yet but that was a part of the fun, perhaps he could manipulate Vader into doing it, or even better, _Leia herself_. . .

Perhaps missing a limb—or another, in Luke's case—to remind them of who was in control. . .

"You're lying," Luke whispered. Leia glanced at him.

Palpatine descended the stairs from the dais, spreading his arms wide. "You are the one gifted in sensing emotions, Luke. You can see the truth when you can see nothing else." Luke flinched. "Am I lying now?"

Luke hesitated. Swallowed. Turned back to Leia again.

His hand tightened on the saber.

Leia gave him a hard look; Palpatine could sense them conversing, though he couldn't sense what they were saying.

It was of no import.

When he cracked their minds open like an egg, he would find out soon enough.

* * *

_Father couldn't— he _wouldn't_—_

_He _would_, _Leia hissed, stalking forwards. Palpatine was approaching now, and they should have attacked him much sooner, but they were not here to kill him and they _were_ supposed to just keep him here until the others could join them. They couldn't take him on now, so keep him talking. They couldn't take him on now, so keep him talking— _But we can still capture Palpatine before he arrives. _Of course_ he betrayed us, I don't know why you're surprised, but if the Jedi pull through for us—_

_Palpatine is _lying_, Leia._ Luke was certain, but he was also desperate. And Leia herself was convinced, to her core, that Palpatine believed what he was saying.

_I don't doubt your ability to read people's emotions, _she said.

_Just my reliability when it comes to Father?_

She didn't answer that. She couldn't.

He knew exactly what her answer would be anyway.

His hurt seeped across their bond and she wanted to beg his forgiveness, but he kept spouting nonsense. _He _let me go_ on Mustafar—if he really wanted to capture us, betray us, why not catch us there?_

_Maybe he wanted to crush the Rebellion once and for all! Not everything is about us!_

_I _know that_, but it doesn't make any sense! How could he have known about Operation Eclipse on Mustafar?_

_Maybe—_

_Don't you _dare_ insinuate I told them._

_I'm not—_

_That's not how torture works, Leia._

I know, _but. . ._

_Look out!_

She turned her head back to Palpatine—just in time to see him summon a lightsaber to hand and swing it at her.

Luke dived in front of her. Red crashed against white, but his grip was wobbly, distracted; _this_, she realised, _is _exactly_ what _he_ wanted to happen—_

She jerked back and sidestepped round, her own saber darting forwards—and he batted that away too.

For a moment, they all stood there. Palpatine grinned broadly, exposing teeth as yellow as the sparks that flew from their crossed sabers, one crimson blade in each hand. She was so tense her back ached.

Palpatine cackled and drew back his sabers, crossing them in a ready position that cast eerie red light over his face.

Leia would have screamed, would have wept, would have sobbed. But she had time to do nothing but _react_ as he stabbed at her brother, and the fight began in earnest.

* * *

The Azure system was difficult to navigate, as a rule: there were enough asteroids in it that a reckless pilot could easily get themselves squashed between the remnants of a once-beautiful planet.

Fortunately, Aphra was not too reckless a pilot—though she did find it in her to wonder what Naboo might have looked like, too, if it, had been shattered by that Death Star. Another destroyed, once-beautiful planet. . .

But Naboo was not a military base. If Naboo had been destroyed, naturally or unnaturally, the system would not remain useful in the way the Azure system did after its main planet's demise.

The _Ark Angel_ soared between the asteroids like a peculiar comet. She was hailed much earlier than expected—they must have sensors far beyond what they could visibly detect—but it was fine. She had the code that authorised her to be here.

She swooped past one large asteroid with what looked like the remnants of a Republic base on it, half-destroyed. She tried not to shudder.

Then her destination came into view: the shipyards, great monsters of Destroyers looming on the largest asteroid in the vicinity. They were _huge_—just as big as Vader's ship, definitely, and there were _so many of them_.

_"Code accepted, _Ark Angel_,"_ said the person hailing her. _"Welcome to Anaxes."_

Vader, she thought grimly, never gave her the easy jobs, did he?


	59. Shatterpoint Ten

**Okay so it is _no_ secret that I _hate_ writing action sequences, which most of this chapter is, but it's the penultimate chapter so here's hoping it came off well anyway. XD**

* * *

They were getting annihilated.

Padmé strode to the edge of the bridge again and back, ignoring Bail's chastising look. As used to doing so as she'd been in the Senate, she couldn't just _stand still_, not when her children were fighting a monster and her husband—

Her husband was _nowhere to be seen_.

He was supposed to come. They'd talked it through with him, the entire plan, everything he needed to know. He'd _known it was her speaking_, and she'd— and she'd tried to keep rigidly in control _while_ speaking but she'd also _hoped_ and now that hope—

It dwindled with every second she stared out at the battle beyond their viewports, the lights and explosions and smoke, until it was as distant as the stars that backlit it all.

She was a senator—or rather, had been. A politician. A pacifist. She knew nothing of military strategy.

But she could tell that without the two fleets Vader had promised, _they were being ground into the dust_.

"Padmé," Bail murmured when she paced back from the viewports to where they were standing, watching the stream of updates hurtle down the screen. "It will be alright."

She took a deep breath and didn't answer him.

_Anakin_, she thought. _Anakin, where are you?_

* * *

_"Is it just me," _Wedge quipped over the comm, _"or do we have a problem?"_

Biggs yanked his joystick to the side and sucked in a breath as he dived right, his torso straining against the harness. The TIEs behind him didn't hesitate to follow but they were too slow to stop when he did, overshooting, sitting ducks for his lasers.

Then another swarm of eyeballs came after him, and he swore.

_"Yes," _he snapped, _"we have a problem."_

_"Weren't we meant to have more support than _this_!? What are they thinking?"_

_"Cut the chatter, Red Two, and shoot those TIEs off your wingman's tail!"_ Red Leader barked.

Wedge answered in affirmative and Biggs breathed in a sigh of relief as the TIEs scattered like birds under his dogged pursuit, looping back around.

"There shouldn't be this many," he muttered.

_"But there _are_,"_ Wedge shot back. _"And look."_

Biggs raised his head to look.

Another Destroyer had reverted to realspace and started shooting, TIEs toppling from its belly like marbles into darkness.

And another.

And another.

There were _so many_—

_"It's about to get a lot worse."_

* * *

Luke sensed it the moment he arrived.

He jerked his head up to stare. Though of course he saw nothing, he could imagine it: the ceiling to the throne room bright with diamond-stars, and beyond it a universe of real stars, pinpricks of light surrounding the souls of the pilots who lived and died above them, and swamping all of it, a long shadow cast by old, old sins—

A monstrous amount of new ships had arrived, and even Palpatine stopped fighting to observe it through the throne room windows, as Destroyer after Destroyer popped into the sky. Luke would've taken advantage of his distraction, would've struck there and then and tried to gain the upper hand, but his lightsaber was limp in his grasp. _He_ was distracted too.

He could sense his father's presence growing ever closer, like the dark wings of some great bird. A ship, coming in to land—right next to where the Jedi were fighting.

"No," he whispered. He could sense Leia's grimness, but she had enough grace not to say _I told you so_.

"Yes, Luke," Palpatine intoned, turning back to him. He made to take several steps closer and Luke tightened his grip on his saber as he felt a wrinkled old hand brush his cheek. Leia was frozen too, staring at them both. "You have to understand that this is a lost cause. Your father loves you both; that is why he is doing this."

The killing began. Death poured from his father's presence.

Luke let the faintest, ironic smile touch his lips. Let a tear track down his cheek. He could sense exactly what his father was doing, and it was branded into his soul.

Leia realised moments later. She shifted her stance slightly—

And Luke thumbed the ignition button of his saber and slashed up.

Palpatine _howled_. His right hand thudded to the floor with a gruesome _thwack_, but Luke was already driving forwards again and he parried awkwardly with just his left. Leia kicked the second lightsaber to the other side of the room and dived for him.

He _smacked_ her back, the Force blow sending a ringing down their bond.

"I know he does," Luke spat. "That is _exactly_ why he's doing this." And he hammered his blade against Palpatine's with all the strength he had in him. He took a _vicious_ pleasure in the man's grunts of pain, of exhaustion, but he could sense him _drawing_ on that pain, how it only fortified him—

And his anger.

That fortified him beyond all belief as well.

Because there were only two new fleets in the sky.

Because they were firing on the Imperials and the battle was turning.

And because with every stroke of his father's sword, an Inquisitor fell.

Palpatine _roared_. The lightning that crackled from his remaining fingertips stank of putrid darkness and pain and seized Luke in the chest like fronds of thorns. It tossed him backwards; he whacked his head against the transparisteel window and groaned, eyes slipping closed for half a heartbeat. His saber rolled out of his hand.

But Leia was up again and leapt in front of him, the lightning lancing off her blade. She _growled_.

And then a voice from the doorway boomed, "Your rule is at an _end_, my master."

Palpatine snarled and stopped his assault. Luke slid down the window to hit the floor and scrabbled around for his lightsaber, shoulders relaxing slightly when his fingers closed around it.

"Is that so, Lord Vader?"

"So, it is," said Master Yoda—and then the other Jedi filed in, and the collective hum of their lightsabers was louder than even the ringing in Luke's ears.

* * *

Leia heaved in breaths, feet planted between Palpatine and Luke, hands constricted on her lightsaber, but _grinned_ more broadly than she had in months. Her father was standing there, lightsaber lit, head tilted towards her and Luke with a protectiveness that eclipsed any other allegiance or desire or hope. She wasn't sure if she wanted to sob, or laugh, or both.

When the group lit their lightsabers, _all_ of them, from green to blue to Ahsoka and Luke's white and her father's red and Leia's purple, she felt destiny click into place.

Her father stalked forwards, forcing Palpatine to turn away from Luke to face him. Luke rolled to his feet, poised to fight.

"Your armies will be obliterated," he growled. "Your Inquisitors are dead or routed, scattered across the planet and the galaxy with no hope of rallying again. I have received word from my agent that your precious Anaxes fleet is nothing but dust and cinders. And you are facing some of the most skilled, resourceful Force-users of the last century, all at once." His gaze lingered on Palpatine's stump of a wrist and he snorted.

Then he pointed his lightsaber at him. Palpatine took a few wary steps back.

"I will give you one chance to surrender peacefully," he ground out, not without sarcasm. Leia winced. She didn't disagree that this was a bad idea, but. . .

Palpatine's face contorted.

"Guards!" he shouted, and another blast of lightning was his answer.

Red guards rushed back in, everyone rushed to fight them, and the world erupted in a storm of colour and light.

* * *

"There's too _many_ of them!"

_"Tell me something I don't know,"_ Biggs grouched over the comm. Wedge rolled his eyes and rolled his ship. The TIEs' barrage of fire sailed smoothly past him. _"Watch out for that second wave coming over there, there's gonna be a lot—"_

_"Rebel squadrons, this is Commander Mithel of Black Squadron,"_ barked a voice over the comms, only for static to steal the rest of his speech. Wedge automatically cringed and went to silence it, but Commander Narra said—

_"Wait. Repeat that, Mithel, I didn't copy." _

_"This is Mithel of Black Squadron of the _Executor_. We, and all Imperial fighters bearing this signature," _Wedge glanced at his display—Rebel ships were lit up in green, TIEs in red, but there was a third group in blue, _"are ordered to fight the Emperor's troops alongside you."_

_"_What_? Why?"_ Wedge burst out before Narra could tell him to shut his trap. _"_You're_ Imperial, _loyal to the Empire, why should we—"

_"We are loyal to Lord Vader and Grand Admiral Thrawn. And we will follow our orders." _The connection cut out.

Wedge yelped as R2-A3 screeched a warning. He had to dart to the side and keep firing for a solid, agonisingly long minute before he could get a word out among the stress but then he barked, "Red Leader? We accepting this?"

_"I don't think we have a choice, Red Two, look how many of 'em there are." _Wedge looked again, and swallowed. _"They could crush us without this deception."_

_"So we're allying with them?"_ Biggs asked.

_"We don't have a choice,"_ Narra repeated.

_Look how many of 'em there are._

Wedge didn't look again. He'd already seen the numbers, but this time it gave him hope.

With these reinforcements. . . they could actually win this thing.

* * *

Padmé burst out laughing when she saw the ships swoop in, like the wind on Naboo that brought summer rains. He was here. He was _here_.

"Ma'am, sir!" A comms officer called out, and Padmé bowed her head but couldn't wipe that wide, relieved _grin_ off her face. . . "We're being hailed! By the _Executor_, the _Chimaera_, the _Devastator_. . ."

Unseen by everyone except Bail, Padmé wiped at the corners of her eyes with her thumb.

Then she turned her gaze downwards.

Bail squeezed her elbow. "We're going to win, Padmé," he murmured. She nodded, glancing out at the battle beyond the viewport which had suddenly become _much_ more promising, but his hand tightening on her elbow brought her gaze back to him as he added: "_They're_ going to win."

She smiled, and nodded. "I know," she said. The certainty was like a fragile bubble, ballooning in her chest. "I know."

* * *

The guards rushed in the moment Palpatine shouted for them.

It went from a moment of triumph to a moment of panic, of slashes and jabs, of life and death. Palpatine cackled lowly as he watched that sea of red. Leia _was not_ about to stand around to be attacked: she dived forwards, lightsaber swinging, forcing him to jerk back, his one remaining lightsaber dancing under hers.

_Luke_, she transmitted, _Luke, we can—_

She received only _panic_ from her brother as he yanked himself to his feet and a red guard drove their Force pike at his arm. He deflected the blow—barely, the electricity sparking and singeing his sleeve, his teeth gritted and crying out when it scorched his arm—

There was a lightsaber under her chin and Leia twisted. Slashed up; impacted against _something_ that made Palpatine grunt, then backpedalled fiercely the moment he lunged, flinched and tossed her head back, the blade narrowly swiping in front of her nose.

"I thought you wanted me alive," she grunted.

"You can live without your pretty face."

She slashed up and nearly took his left hand too. He only laughed.

"Are you going to kill me, dear Leia?" he taunted, dancing away from her, one step, then another, then another, and she marched forwards for a two-handed downwards strike that had him staggering backwards even more, the dais looming in her sights behind him—

And out of the corner of her eye, she saw her father.

He was a dark knight lit in the beams of blue, green, red and white, like fireworks on Empire Day, like all the lights of a supernova were gleaming off the contours of his mask. Two red guards rushed him, pikes crackling purple—

With a single swipe, he beheaded them both, and crushed the skull of a third in his fist.

_There are too many,_ she thought. _But not for Father_.

She grinned at Palpatine. "I'm saving that honour for someone else."

The fear in his gaze as he beheld Vader for that moment, the towering behemoth _he had created_, was as sweet as sugared treats.

He regained his composure an instant later, but he was _unnerved_. In the swirl of red and colours around them, the constant motion, his head was a calm focal point and he met her gaze solidly. That was rage in his face.

"An honour," he spat, climbing the steps to the dais one by meticulous one, "_indeed_."

He lashed out, down at her, striking at her left, her right, but his one-handed blows were oddly _laughable_ even as she knew he was using the pain to make him stronger. She followed him up with quick sharp steps to fight before the throne, fight _for _the throne, deflected the blows with ease—left, right, left, then stepped inside his guards to aim a blade straight for his heart—

He twisted away from her, grunting, and she saw in his eyes that that had not been planned.

What had been planned? What—

Another terrified look at Vader as more guards' heads rolled like crimson dice, as his helmet emerged from the mass of red and black like a mythical creature rising from the lakes of Naboo. . .

He was afraid.

Of course he was afraid. And if he was afraid—

He turned, to almost run through her, but she _jumped_ over him, twisting in midair, lashing out to scratch him in the shoulder and elicit a scream—

And she landed neatly in front of the secret passage behind the throne.

Blocking his access.

"Going somewhere?" she taunted.

Palpatine snarled. "You're too clever for your own good."

"So are you. But if you were cleverer you might've known that my father—"

Something drove into her shoulder and _shocked her_.

Her teeth rattled in her skull; her eyes rolled in their sockets. She collapsed to her knees, crying out in shades of red and grey as hot, thick blood and _spasms_ drenched her left shoulder—

And red robes swirled around her—reinforcements from behind the curtain.

"Did you think I was going to run?" Palpatine mocked. "In my moment of triumph?"

"You're right." She dragged herself away on shaking legs, panting, pain screeching up and down her shoulders. The newest guard brought their pike in two hands and shoved it down; she rolled. "You're not wise enough for that—"

Rolled, lit her lightsaber, and stabbed right up the guard's robes.

The screech he gave off was horrible, and horribly satisfying.

She staggered to her feet, away from him, teeth gritted and saber clutched so tightly it hurt in her hand—half-tripped down the stairs, blade up to ward against—one attack, two attacks, three— She slipped, her grip shifting wrongly; she couldn't move out of the way for the ache in her shoulder—

And a bright white blade flashed in front of her.

Luke jumped forwards, spinning, swinging—

The Force pikes clanged against his blade loudly and he _pushed_, cut low, slashing at their knees and then high again—

"Following Father's example, aren't you?" she commented, watching him jump up and shear through them.

"Are you alright!?" He took her right arm and dragged her away, flipping his lightsaber in his grip and driving it into the back of the nearest red guard. When they fell, Ezra gave him a nod of appreciation he didn't acknowledge.

Leia rolled her shoulder. It screamed. "I'm fine."

"No you're not."

"Palpatine is getting away, I need—"

"You _traitor_!" Palpatine roared, and Leia whipped her head around when she saw lightning out of the corner of her vision.

Jade deflected it with ease, off the blade of a lightsaber that was so bright blue it hurt Leia's eyes to look at.

"Not this time," she snarled, "_Master_."

Jade was a talented duellist, but not compared to Palpatine. But Palpatine was injured. Off his balance.

Leia smiled grimly as she shook off Luke's hand, wiped the blood off her palm on her trousers, and stood up straight. Her Rebel fatigues were _soaked_, her plait was coming apart, but—

She _grinned_.

The red guards were falling back. She glanced around, saw Vader carving a swathe through them, _obliterating them_ like he obliterated Rebels, like he obliterated training droids; Ahsoka, leaping over two of their heads, sabers flashing in twin arcs of sunlight; Yoda, flipping and flapping; the Spectres, fighting back to back; Jade—

Jade, forcing Palpatine down, down from the dais, standing two steps above him like judgement's statue, raining blows upon blows upon—

Palpatine jerked back, out of her range. Took precious long seconds, smiling unsettlingly at her while she forged forwards again—

Then _unleashed_ a lightning surge.

It threw her back; something cracked as—Leia ducked her head and twisted her good arm to impale a guard who rushed her—Jade hit the steps to the dais, slamming her head against the marble floor, and his fingers were curled again for the second round. . .

And Luke dived in front of her.

He didn't bring his saber up to block the lightning—he couldn't _see_ the lightning, and it struck his head, his torso, forcing him back and he _grunted_ fiercely but stood his ground, a terrifying snarl twisting his face at the sensation. Walked forwards through the storm like a man possessed, shudders wracking his body. Palpatine's mouth opened in an _oh_ shape and he brought his free hand up again, the lightsaber hilt resting precariously in it—

Luke downward stroke interrupted his summoning, forced him to light the saber, block, parry. Luke's gait was something inevitable, something unstoppable, and he stepped forwards and forwards and forwards, flecking tiny, agonising burns over Palpatine's biceps, his shoulders, his _face_—

At one point, a swing almost took out his eyes.

"Are you trying to kill me?"

"What gave you that impression?" Luke spat—and the sudden _fury_ in his voice shocked even her, his shields were locked down so tight, as he lunged, saber hammering and hammering and hammering and hammering and hammering—

_Luke_, Leia reminded. _We need to capture him alive_.

Luke. . . visibly drew back, at that reminder; gritted his teeth against the lingering pain from the Force lightning, fought—

And Palpatine unleashed another blow.

He was thrown back too, this time, but caught himself before he rammed into the steps and was on his feet again in an instant. His blows were slower, less intent, less fierce; he had not been using the dark side before, he had not _touched_ the energies Palpatine shared from the moment they entered, but now. . . Now that he'd remembered not to kill. . . there was still a notable, dangerous difference. . .

Leia limped over and shouted out as she drove her saber forwards—right for Palpatine's shoulder as well. _Retribution. Revenge_. They meant nothing, but _clearly_ it would disable, might even be conveniently fatal if the wound wasn't cauterised properly and bled, and they just needed a way—

Palpatine twisted to avoid it, swinging his own lightsaber back at her fast enough she was forced back.

_We need to knock him out. We can't take him alive otherwise._

_How,_ Luke snapped, backing up a few wary steps and examining Jade with concern through the Force, though he never took a pinch of his attention off of Palpatine, _are we going to do that?_

_Force suggestion? Send him to sleep?_

_I refuse to touch his mind. Do that yourself._

Fine. She was the granddaughter of the Force. She could—

She skimmed the surface of his mind, _flooding_ it with the minutiae of the Jedi mind trick some of the resident Force-users had tried to teach her—

He staggered under the suggestion, his focus wavering enough that she carved a deep furrow in his arm, but he did not sleep. She flinched back from his mind, feeling the darkness reach for her, like jaws in the darkness, like teeth dripping saliva and blood.

"You didn't think that would work, did you?" He turned to smile at her, though she noticed that he didn't take all his attention off Luke, getting to his feet, either. "Sabotage is an underhanded tactic for someone who professes—"

_That's not going to work_. Luke had gone to Jade, dragged her back to consciousness, but now they were both ducking and weaving around several more guards who'd materialised, arcs of violet and white and blue painting the air like some complex Mon Cala water painting.

_Clearly!_ Leia blocks Palpatine's lazy slash with ease and cut up, forcing him to twist out of the way; she tested his defence with a flurry of quick blows, watching his lag fade with each blocked one, then he was on top of her again, bearing down, and—

She understood why, when Luke and Jade had been electrocuted, they'd screamed so loudly.

Her saber rolled out of her hand. She could smell her hair burning and shrivelling on her scalp. The _intensity_, the force of it, knocked the breath from her lungs, worse that any Force pike; the pain in her shoulder still cried but everything cried, and she was on her knees, a slice of crimson bearing down on her—

And another slice stopped it.

She relaxed before she knew why; when she heard the rhythmic, rasping respirator, _she knew why_. She wanted to sob as Palpatine snarled, and Vader hissed, "I told you. Your rule is at an _end_—"

"Father—" Leia tried to say. There was so much she wanted to say—_be careful, your suit is vulnerable to electricity; I'm sorry I doubted you; help Luke instead of me; I'll be fine—_

_Thank you—_

"I should punish you like the rebellious slave you are," Palpatine spat. "Shut you down like a faulty _droid_—"

"I _removed_ the _transmitter_ you planted in me, over a year ago." Vader punctuated his words with a harsh downward stroke, his prosthetics and weight and _height_ all slamming down at once with a swing Palpatine staggered to avoid; a side cut full of _power_ he desperately tried to deflect one-handed— "I am slave to _no one_."

He had. He had done that, removed that transmitter, told them about it and set all of this into motion—

"Allow me to assure you otherwise," Palpatine spat back, raised his hands, and Leia flinched in anticipation for an onslaught that never came.

Instead, Palpatine. . . rocked.

Bucked.

Teetered on his feet.

Leia stared. Then she moved her gaze past him—to Luke.

Luke, who was sporting a fresh shallow but bloody starburst in his right arm, weeping red over his sleeve, who was holding a guard's blaster in his hand. He shot him again, the blue stun ring soaking into his back.

Palpatine. . . resisted. Fiercely. He struggled to lift his head again, nerves crashing together.

Luke walked around to stand shoulder to shoulder with Vader and reached out his left hand in Leia's direction; she took it with her right, and hauled herself up.

"Stun?" Palpatine rasped, glaring up at Luke. Luke's face stayed impassive, but Palpatine's shock, surprise. . . well, he looked stunned.

Luke didn't reply.

He just shot him again, and watched him slump to the floor, unconscious.

Around them, the bodies of red guards littered the room. All was still, and silent.

Leia did a quick head count—none of theirs had died. Odd. It had all happened so fast, the guards were so skilled. . .

Perhaps, she dared to hope, the Force was with them after all.

* * *

The Imperials collapsed before the sheer _numbers_ they were facing, and Padmé was finding it easier and easier to breathe.

"Word from Fulcrum in the Palace, ma'am!" one of her aides said, and whatever remaining blockage in her lungs vanished.

She spun round so fast she scared the living daylights out of him. "And?"

He smiled as he said, "Target captured. Safe to engage."

Her face split into the widest smile she'd worn in fifteen or sixteen years. She had to restrain from jumping up and now—which would've been _very_ undignified for Lady Amidala of the Rebel Alliance—but— but—

They'd done it.

Her children had done it.

"Prepare my ship," she ordered. "And prepare for all troops to head for the surface. With those Destroyers defeated. . ."

She looked out the viewports again, at that leviathan ships hanging dead in space, crumbling bit by bit under attacks of fire and plasma.

"The planet is ours."

* * *

They'd arrayed themselves in the middle of Palpatine's throne room when Padmé arrived, injuries superficially treated and wrapped, bandages and bacta patches abounding. The Spectres had headed to the medbay, as had Yoda, to deal with some more serious ones, but despite Luke's insistences, Leia had refused. Her shoulder injury was bound for now; it still hurt like hell, but she wasn't going to let Palpatine _or_ her family out of her _sight_.

She lifted her head to see Padmé stride in, hair tied tightly behind her head in a braided bun. She was wearing a simple white jumpsuit with a belt for her blaster, but something. . . _jerked_ in Vader's presence when he laid eyes on her, and Leia had to wonder.

Padmé was short, the shortest in the room with Yoda gone, but she seemed to _tower_ with the way she strode, the tight, determined set of her mouth. She shot Ahsoka a nod and a smile, and that smile widened when she clapped eyes on Luke and Leia, alive and well. . . then she laid eyes on Vader for a second, and they both stilled.

Stared at each other for a moment. Padmé's hand tightened around her blaster.

But then she kept moving, her gaze kept roving, until. . .

She stopped right in front of Luke and Leia.

In front of the Emperor kneeling between them, head bowed and gaze simmering, cuffed in binders that made it feel like the Force had never existed.

Leia felt no pity for his plight at all.

Padmé didn't bend down to look her old mentor in the eye; she just frowned, accepting the only height advantage she knew she could get.

It was Palpatine who spoke first. "Come to gloat, Amidala?"

Her mouth twisted. "I'm glad I never stuck around to see what you were like as an Imperial politician. I imagine it was disgusting."

_It was_, Leia thought, but didn't say. Padmé's brown eyes were fixed on Palpatine's amber.

"You will be trialled," she told him. "You will face the shame you brought to Naboo, to all of us you manipulated so you could get into your position to torment and torture others, and stand justice for the crimes you have wrought upon the galaxy. Democracy has won."

"You should just kill me, dear Padmé," he rasped. "After all the suffering I've caused your precious Naboo. . . your precious Republic. . ." His gaze shifted. "Your precious _children_. You should just kill me, or I will only cause more."

"Is that a promise?" she asked.

"It's a threat."

She turned away. "I am not you," she said simply, and her gaze found Vader as if by default. "We are not the Empire. You will stand trial."

He didn't say anything to that, for a moment, smiling faintly.

Then he said, "You are _weak_."

"I'm not the one kneeling." She shook her head. "I'm not the one who's lost everything. Not this time."

Leia stared at them both for a moment: the politicians, both from Naboo, both from a culture and a time far more complex and grey than this one. Palpatine had been Padmé's mentor, once upon a time. She had trusted him.

But she had ignored him, gone against him, even then, and she had succeeded whenever she did.

She had been the wrench in the works of all his plans, and also the best foil and opposition leader from the moment he achieved them.

Leia loved her mother so much.

Then Palpatine growled, "You will be."

It happened in a flash. Palpatine jerked to the side while they were both distracted. With one swing of his binders, he slapped Luke's lightsaber across the floor; with another, his one remaining hand darted up and grasped her brother's throat.

_Squeezing_.

Luke's eyes blew wide and he tumbled backwards, hitting the floor hard, Palpatine on top of him. Leia could feel him gasping for air, feel the waves of agony rolling off him, but when her fingers landed on Palpatine's and she _pried_, shoulder twinging and spasming, she couldn't get a solid grip, they didn't _budge_—

The _rage_ that rolled off Palpatine was not something she needed the Force to sense, it was all-powerful, his hatred was all-consuming, it would devour the galaxy and snuff out every star that lived within it—

A flash of red; a blaster shot. Leia and Luke ducked.

Palpatine's body slumped to the ground, two smoking holes pocked in his chest.

Vader extinguished his lightsaber; Padmé lowered her blaster.

They. . . looked at each other for a moment.

Luke sagged back against the floor, rubbing his throat. "What happened to _capture him alive_?" he. . . not _spat_, but it wasn't a conversational tone either. His voice was gravelly.

"He was captured alive. Now he is dead."

Luke rolled his eyes at Vader's response, but. . .

Leia narrowed her eyes at Padmé—at her wide eyes, heavy breathing, her shaking grip on her blaster. . . She hadn't taken her gaze off of Luke.

"We are not the Empire," she repeated breathlessly to herself, trying to convince herself. . . "But. . . perhaps we should not make the mistakes the late Republic did, either."

Jade snorted under her breath. "Finally."

Luke said, "Thank you, Mother," and Padmé. . . relaxed. Offered him a small smile.

They knew she hadn't done it for the Republic.

"What now?" Leia asked.

Padmé smiled at Leia. "Now you're Empress," she said. "The throne is yours."

Leia turned to look at it.

_I will be Empress,_ her vision had said.

_You will be alone._

Slowly, _so_ slowly, Leia limped up the stairs to the dais. Everyone else followed, fanning out around the throne room to get a better look.

Leia raised her gaze to the ceiling and the diamonds set there as she sat down, and a wave of. . . not _darkness_, but something akin to it swept through her, glittering and sweet and enticing. The galaxy was hers, as she'd always hoped. She could do whatever she wanted—bring back the Republic, or get rid of the bureaucrats she'd always hated, or. . .

When her gaze turned down again, people were kneeling.

Not everyone. But Vader was. Jade was. The Imperials, used to seeing someone on that throne, overcome with deference and fealty and. . .

Her gaze moved to Luke.

He was kneeling too, and that would _not do_.

"Get up," she snapped, standing up herself, resisting the urge to stomp her foot. "Luke, get up. You're mocking me."

He jerked, like waking from a dream, and pushed at his knee to stand. A ridiculous smirk graced his face. "I'm not mocking you."

"You're _mocking me_."

"I'm _not mocking you_."

They stared at each other for a moment. He was mocking her.

Best way to make sure the power didn't go to her head, after all.

Padmé cleared her throat.

Leia looked up and smiled.

"I'm sorry," she said. "We're ready."

"To do what?"

Her smile widened. "To get to work."


	60. Epilogue

**Ahhhh so this is the last chapter! ****I... genuinely don't know what to say, this fic is the longest I've ever written, one of the most ambitious I've ever written, and... writing and then preparing the weekly updates became such an intrinsic part of my routine that it's going to be _strange_ to have that gone. I started this in February last year; I finished writing most of it, minus some rewrites, this April... It's just very hard to believe that it's finally come to a close.**

**Thank you so, so much to everyone who's read this, whether you read it with every chapter coming out or years in the future; particularly those who have reviewed and those who've reviewed _regularly;_ and _especially_ all those people who listened to me rant about it, helped me brainstorm it, discussed it with me and put up with my constant chatter about it. I'd apologise for all the cliffhangers I put you all through... but I'm not all that sorry. XD**

**Thank you all so much for reading, and I hope you've enjoyed it!**

* * *

Getting to sail through the airlanes of Coruscant without being shot down by a touchy Imp was a moment Wedge would savour _forever_. He was flanked by Biggs on one side and one of the pilots from the _Executor_—some guy from Alderaan, judging by his accent—on the other; it felt like they'd already jumped to the victory parade. People were cheering below—those who dared to come out and express such Rebel sympathies, at least.

At one point, he was pretty sure he flew over a massive statue of the Emperor getting torn down by people's bare hands.

But if flying through the dark heart of the Empire was great, landing in the hangars of the Imperial Palace itself was unbelievable. For all that the Imps seemed to value. . . _minimalism_. . . in their architecture and designs, this place was bedecked in grandeur. Wedge wondered why—wondered if Palpatine had revelled in having something he denied the rest of the galaxy.

Wondered what it'd been like for Luke and Leia, growing up among these halls.

He landed. Climbed out of his X-wing, and the moment he landed on his feet strong arms wrapped around him and nearly knocked him off them again.

He laughed aloud. "Biggs, Hobbie, we—"

"We _won_," Biggs said, a fierce grin on his face. Wedge grinned back.

"Yes we did."

* * *

Palpatine's death was announced as soon as possible, and preparations for Leia's imminent coronation were underway by that evening. Padmé had spent hours and hours in meetings with Rebel High Command to decide the minutiae of what was going to happen going forwards—whether the Rebellion would continue fighting the remnants of the Empire to keep up appearances, whether Leia should formally surrender to the Rebellion, which moffs and governors and generals needed to be removed first and which parts of Imperial law should be _immediately_ scrapped. . .

When she finally staggered out, she was utterly exhausted. But not too exhausted to skip the conversation she knew she needed to have.

She knew the twins had gone to their apartment—_her old_ _apartment_, from her tenure as senator—to rest for the time being. They'd both needed rest and recuperation from their various injuries, after they'd been each dunked in a bacta tank for them. Padmé would join them there later, she was sure—but until then, she had something else to deal with.

The cold heralded his arrival in the Palace office she'd claimed as her own, closely followed by the rasping of his breath. She'd be lying if she didn't feel her heart leap from fear at the first sight of him, but she smiled anyway, ignoring his flinch.

"Anakin," she greeted warmly, if a little stiffly.

It had been eighteen years, after all.

"Padmé," he replied, godlike reverence rushing through his voice, and she winced a little.

"I'm real, Anakin," she snapped. Her hand flattened on the table. "Stop _looking_ at me like that: I'm real, I'm alive, and we need to talk through this like adults instead of like dramatic lost lovers." She inclined her head to the seat opposite her desk. "Now sit down, and let's go."

He hesitated.

"What is it?"

He huffed a laugh—at least, that's what she assumed the noise through his vocoder was. It sounded more like static.

"I doubt this chair will hold my weight," he said.

"Your _weight_?" Padmé scoffed. She felt. . . jittery. "Since when were you too heavy to sit down?"

"This suit is not light."

Right. She swallowed.

Of course.

"Then I'll stand," she decided, pushing her own chair back.

"No, you've had a long day—"

"And I already have a crick in my neck from staring down at reports, I'm not going to crane it to look up at you." She stood. She still had to crane her neck to look him in the eye, but less so.

Silence reigned.

Well, Padmé thought. Might as well get it out in the open.

"You tried to kill me," she said, jutting out her chin. "On Mustafar. You tried to kill me, and the twins I was carrying, because you didn't stop to listen to what I was saying and were far too busy hating Obi-Wan for something he had every right to do."

Vader said, in a tone that might have held emotion, if it wasn't so booming, "I did."

"Do you regret it?"

He was silent for a moment.

"Padmé," he said. "I have regretted it every day of my life, with every fibre of my being."

She folded her hands in front of her. "Are you going to ask why I joined the Rebellion?" From what Leia had told her about her father, about his politics, it was a good bet—if he'd done all of this in _her name_, thinking it was what she would want—

"No," he said, surprising her. Her mouth fell open without her permission. "No, I understand now. I. . . have thought about it, greatly, since I discovered you still lived. Since Palpatine told me about the Anaxes fleet."

Shiraya's word, she hated this new speech pattern of his. So stilted and unnatural.

"You loved the Republic. For whatever reason." She snorted, and so did he—then they exchanged an awkward look at the synchrony. "Of course you would join the Alliance to Restore the Republic."

"I _founded_ it," she corrected.

"I see."

She narrowed her eyes at him. "You want to know why I didn't come back to you." He nodded. "I didn't trust you—not with my twins. And Tatooine was a perfect place to hide at first, I _certainly_ wasn't going to raise my children on a war frontier, but. . ."

"But you couldn't stay away."

She glared. "No," she said.

"You left them."

"Better that than raise them to be soldiers in a war they had no choice in," she snapped, "which is exactly what _you_ did."

"They were stewing in poverty, with people who had no rights to them, ignorant of the power that was their birthright—"

"Obi-Wan would've taught them when they were old enough if _you_ hadn't killed him—"

"Taught him the corrupt dogma of the _Jedi_—"

"The twins _chose_ the Jedi, having lived as Sith for as long as they knew, so don't you _dare_ preach about your superiority," she hissed. "Luke and Leia are intelligent, moral, stubborn, wonderful human beings. Are you going to invalidate their independent thought and choices like this?"

Vader clenched his fists. . . but said nothing.

Padmé realised she was trembling, and took a deep breath to steady herself.

"We can work out our differences later," she said calmly. "We have a great deal to hash out, and—"

"I did invalidate their choices," he said.

She blinked.

"I did invalidate their choices, their free will. They are my children, they are not meant to follow my every whim like some terrified subordinate"—she winced at _that_ comparison—"and yet when Luke dared to tell me the truth, and challenge me. . . I lashed out at him. I cut off his hand. Handed him over to be tormented."

She said nothing.

"He was a child," he whispered. "How could I do that to my child?"

And she knew he was remembering the same thing she was.

_Obi-Wan told me terrible things. . ._

"You are well accustomed to killing children," she said coldly.

He didn't even try to deny it.

"Will—" He paused. "Will they ever—"

"I don't know. You'll have to talk to the twins about that yourself. But the most important question we can come out of this room having answered is this." She planted her hands on the desk and leaned forwards. "What are you going to do for the Empire, or for the Republic, now?"

He said nothing for three, agonising cycles of that horrible respirator.

"I am going to serve Leia in whatever capacity she wants me to," he said. "And the same for you."

She scoffed. "I don't want to hear dejected platitudes that you'll do whatever you're told, Anakin." He flinched. "You're a person and your name is Anakin, remember? Now tell me what that person is going to choose to do."

He stared at her.

She refused to flinch.

"I am going to make my family happy," he said. "I want to do that, and to make up for everything I have done wrong. I am going to fight for your Republic, defeat the remaining Inquisitors and agents scattered across the galaxy, protect the twins, and free slaves."

She smiled. "That's more like it. But I have to ask. . ." She stood up straight again and lifted her chin. "Will you follow Republic law? Will you follow Republic orders that may not come directly from myself or the twins?"

"I will."

"And. . ." She swallowed. "When we start trialling various Imperial war criminals for their conquests against the galaxy, will you agree to stand trial as well?"

Vader said, "I will agree to be executed, if that comes."

"We don't want you _dead_," she said. Her tone was hard, and she couldn't explain the sudden _panic_ that seized her chest at that—no. That was a lie. She could explain it perfectly. "We will not execute you. Did you think we would, when we tried to offer _Palpatine_ mercy? No. At worst, you will be exiled, or imprisoned for life, and in all scenarios you will still be able to see us. We will still _want_ to see you."

His mask tilted away from her but she moved around her desk to still meet his eye. She didn't stop, either: she went right forward, to hover her hand over where his control box was.

He didn't flinch. Didn't move to stop her.

She rested her hand on his chest plate instead.

"Anakin," she said. "If you want to redeem yourself. . . you have to _live_."

* * *

Luke and Leia had nothing to do for now: Yoda was being treated for his injuries, muttering about retirement, Ahsoka was coordinating everything, and all the pieces were falling into place of their own accord.

All there was to do was go home.

The apartment reminded Luke so much of his mother, now that he returned to it having met her, but he couldn't place why. Maybe it was a scent long, long since faded; the layout and style that remained, when Vader had refused to change it; a ghostly imprint in the Force that had lingered after her 'death'.

He didn't know, but he enjoyed it. And he enjoyed just. . . getting to _relax_ with Leia, laughing, sitting back into the familiar armchair in the living room, feet propped up on the table.

Then they both sensed their father enter.

They'd sensed his approach, of course. Despite how closed off their bond was—more by instinct now than out of any real necessity—they could sense him coming from miles away. And when he stepped inside, they thought they were ready.

This was a conversation they needed to have, after all.

"Leia," Vader said, stepping into the living room to see them relaxing, an old packet of biscuits open on the table and crumbs strewn all over them both, "Luke." There was amusement in his voice as he observed, "Luke, you know you are not allowed to do that."

Luke raised his eyebrows at him. He smirked, and didn't move.

His father didn't object to it. He just came in and sat on one of the sofas opposite them himself.

"I. . . wanted to talk to you both," he said. "I wanted to apologise. For everything."

Leia made to say something, but Luke cut him off. "You already have, Father."

Both Leia and Vader turned to _stare_ at him in abject shock.

Luke said, "You said everything you needed to say on Mustafar and— and I know that nothing is going to take anything back, it won't get me a new hand, it won't—" He touched his throat lightly. "It won't erase any of the pain or the scars or—"

"Or restore your eyesight," Leia said pointedly.

He scowled at her. "Shut up, Empress. I'm talking."

He was pretty sure she stuck her tongue out at him.

"_Anyway_," he said. "In that throne room Palpatine tried to convince us you'd sided with him again and _for a moment, I nearly believed it_. But you came through. I had faith in you then, and I have faith in you now, Father. I know that you love us. I know that you only want to help us."

He could feel his father's gaze riveted to his face; Vader leaned forwards, and laid heavy hands on Luke's temple, thumbs ghosting over his cheeks.

Luke laughed and caught his father's wrists, lowering them. "You tried to save me, Father, I remember that," he said. "And why do you think I tried to save you?"

Leia scoffed. Both Vader and Luke turned to her, but Luke knew her gaze was only for Vader, disgusted and conflicted and longing all at once.

"You hurt my brother," she whispered. Vader. . . bowed his head, Luke thought.

"I did," he said. "And I will regret it for the rest of my life."

Leia gritted her teeth, looking between Luke and Vader, taking deep breaths.

"Prove to me that you will," she said thickly. "Don't hurt us again. Help us with— with the Republic, with everything." Luke reached out to take her hand; she clung to him tightly. He doubted she wanted anyone to see how nervous she was about all of this when she ascended to a dead man's throne tomorrow.

"I will," Vader vowed.

"You won't hurt the Jedi. You won't hurt the Rebels. You'll cooperate and help us, without— without trying to _manipulate_ us into keeping it an Empire?" She spat the word _manipulate_ and also _Empire_. Luke knew exactly who she was thinking about.

Vader said, "I won't. I will provide my own point of view. . . but I will never try to sway your decision." He paused, then said, "Your mother thinks there will be a trial."

Leia swallowed. "There will be."

"I will almost certainly be convicted of heinous crimes against the galaxy."

"Then," Luke said simply, "starting tomorrow, you'd better start showing why you're more useful to the Republic when remaining in power, rather than locked in a cell somewhere."

Leia fixed him with a look. "There will be politicians. Annoying ones. You're not allowed to kill them."

"That is no change."

"There will be Jedi. You must avoid contact with them if at all possible, and must never so much as touch them."

"I will oblige. Will—" He cut himself off, to get the disdain in his voice under control. "Will _Master Yoda_ be re-establishing the Jedi?"

"No. Kanan and Ezra will. Yoda is going to retire."

Luke smiled. "I mean, he deserves it."

"He does."

Vader snorted. No one commented.

Silence descended.

Finally, Vader said, "I. . . just want you well. Both of you. That has always been my primary concern, and I will never forgive myself for how terribly I hurt you, and how twisted my pursuit of that goal became."

He cupped Luke's cheek in one massive hand and Luke leaned into it. Tears tracked down his cheeks.

"Your mother says I should have left you on Tatooine, where it would be safer for Force-sensitives, rather than bringing you to Palpatine's attention," he continued. His voice was artificial, and it could not break, but Luke swore he heard it tremble anyway. "And I should have. But I am selfish enough that I do not regret stealing these eleven years with the two of you anyway."

Even Leia was crying now.

And as the sun sank on the last day of Palpatine's rule, there they embraced, in the same sitting room where their father had told them the truth about Tatooine, in the same position Luke and Leia had resolved to rebel. . . and in the same apartment where Senator Amidala had founded the Rebellion itself all those years before.

* * *

They had to awaken early the next morning so Leia could prepare for her coronation, so Luke spent the dawn leaning against a balcony in the Imperial Palace as the city glinted golden. Leia was dressing, and being drilled on what she had to say, making sure everything about this snap coronation ran smoothly; soon Luke would have to do it himself, as a prince in name, brother of the new Empress, but for now neither his mother nor his father were nagging him, so he enjoyed what little peace he could find.

He smiled when he sensed her approach, but didn't turn around. "I haven't seen much of you recently."

"I've been helping Tano and your father," Mara said, slipping through the door to lean against the balcony. "Going through the records of where the remaining Inquisitors are, where they might lie low. What they might do next."

"I'm sorry about my father."

He felt her shift her gaze from the city to him, assessing him. Not without amusement. "What did he do?"

"Considering his track record, I assume he did something."

She laughed. "That's fair enough," she admitted, "but no. Nothing today. He seemed oddly melancholy, in fact. Don't suppose you know anything about that?"

Luke's lips curved upwards, but he said nothing.

She huffed. "Of course." She turned her gaze back to the dawn and the newly-liberated planet, the darkness that slowly burned away with every new ray of light. "It's beautiful, isn't it? I was never supposed to stop and look at the view—there's never any time for that, amongst the training—but. . . It's a beautiful planet, corrupt and complex as it is. Especially in the sunrise."

Luke's smile turned a little bitter. "Is it?"

He could feel the cool morning winds stirring in his hair, warmth on his skin as sunlight slipped over his fingers curved around the railing, then up his chest, onto his face. He could hear the whirr of speeders that never ended and the distant chirps and screeches of the birds that fended out their living on a built-up ecumenopolis. He could smell the metal heating up, the oil and smog on the breeze.

And he could sense the uncharacteristic peace Mara was feeling, that wrapped around her like angels' wings, and it make him smile too.

"It is," she said.

He turned his face towards her. He'd never seen her at dawn, but he'd seen enough suns to imagine the glint of gold off her hair, the impasto shadows cast across her face, the way light caught in her green eyes like two discs of emerald glass, lit from behind. Another breeze caught a strand of hair and blew it against Luke's shoulder; she must have it down, then, instead of ruthlessly tied back. A worthless luxury that he nonetheless added to his mental image.

"It is," he conceded.

Then he took a deep breath. "You know. . . I told myself that when everything was over, when we were at peace, I'd let myself rest. I'd. . ."

She got what he was saying—all of it.

"But it's not over, is it?"

He shook his head.

She kept talking, pushing herself off the railing to stand up straight. "There's Inquisitors to hunt, Imperials to prosecute. Alliances to form, laws to change, and—" He sensed her move her gaze to the dressing room through the open doors, the distant voices of Leia and the dressmaker, then back to him. "Empresses to support and sisters to cherish."

"No. It's definitely not over yet."

"Will it ever be?"

He shrugged. "Hopefully. Probably when I'm older and wiser."

She snorted at that. "I don't think you'll ever be wise."

He affected a dramatic gesture of hurt and she laughed loudly enough to startle a nearby bird; Luke heard its frantic wings beating to get away from them, whether the air was cleaner near the Palace or not.

He asked, "What will you do now?"

He knew exactly what sort of wicked smirk she was sporting as she said, "Your father says he needs people to hunt down the other Inquisitors. I'll do it—I'm the ideal candidate, since all the other Force users are going to be busy some way or another."

"Except Yoda."

"Except Yoda." She snorted. "I hear Solo survived the battle and is wanting to make himself useful. He and his co-pilot have volunteered their piece-of-junk ship. I'll go with them."

"You and _Han_?" He couldn't help his chuckle. "You'll rip each other apart."

"And we'll rip our enemies apart even faster," she shot back. "Why—" She hesitated. "Why don't you come with us? We made a great team, the three of us. We'll be even better with his co-pilot with us."

It was his turn to glance back at Leia, now.

He loved his sister. He wanted to support his sister, and everything was better when he was around her. . . but they'd also both proven that they didn't _need_ each other to survive.

"Give us a few months to tie things down here," he promised. "Then you can't keep me away."

She beamed. He could sense it, and he tried to contain his answering grin.

Her comlink bleeped. "I have to go," she said quietly. "I'll see you around, Luke."

He closed his eyes when she kissed him on the cheek, then. . . "Wait. Mara."

She paused.

"One more question," he said. "I meant to ask about the lightsaber you were wielding against Palpatine."

"Huh?" He heard her fumble at her belt. "Yoda gave it to me—said that someone called Kenobi had had it, before he died, and that it was an old friend's." She offered it out to him.

Luke felt the grip of the lightsaber, something in the Force telling him about it. . . and he smiled.

He knew whose this had been, once upon a time.

He handed it back to her. "It's a good lightsaber," he offered.

"It is." She made to say something else—then paused, when they both sensed that other presence standing there, waiting.

She stepped away. "Goodbye, Luke."

He didn't bother saying farewell again. He just waited for her to leave, and turned to say softly, to the other person waiting, "Father?"

"Your mother says it's your turn to get fitted," he said directly, if distractedly. He stood slightly behind Luke, unimpressed by the scene of Coruscant before him. "She's dressing both you and Leia in all white, despite my insistence that you _will_ get food all over yourself at the banquet."

Luke laughed. "I appreciate the concern."

"She said—"

Luke waited, but whatever his father had been about to say, it wasn't forthcoming.

Instead, he said, "I don't understand."

Luke waited some more before he leaned back against the railing, tilted his head up to him and teased, "You don't understand what? I don't understand a lot of things, like why you're still concerned about us spilling soup on ourselves like we're ten—"

"I _don't understand_ you, Luke," he said fiercely. "Your sister. . . she's protective on your behalf, but I did not _hand her over to Palpatine and injure her_. She has forgiven me because you have. But. . ."

"You don't understand why I have?" Luke asked softly.

His father didn't nod. But he did say, "I don't deserve it."

Luke make a noise at the back of his throat. "Perhaps you don't," he said. "But I think I deserve my father, don't I?"

"Yes, but—"

"But what?"

"I took your hand," he whispered. "You offered everything to me, and when I took your hand it was with a lightsaber."

The winds through Coruscant always sounded the same, Luke knew. He could hear them now.

But he could also hear his own voice saying: "Then take it again."

"What?"

Luke held out his hand—his left hand, his organic hand, palm up. His right, artificial hand, stayed dangling at his side.

"Stay with us," he said. "I can't promise things will be the same—they won't be. I'm not your _dutiful son_; I don't desperately want your approval anymore. But I do want _you_. Not the Emperor's executioner. Not whatever servant you want to reduce yourself to in service of the Republic in order to right your wrongs. I want my father.

"So come with us," he said quietly. "Or rather—stay with us. We can't be the family you dreamed of. But we can be real, and true, and we can love each other just as much."

Vader didn't take his hand for a long time, but it wasn't out of hesitation; Luke could sense that. He was studying his face closely instead.

When leather-clad, durasteel fingers touched his hand, he flinched momentarily—they were _cold_—before he gratefully wrapped his flesh fingers around them. He moved his other hand—his artificial hand—over to cover it as well, clutching tightly.

"You really do need to go and get fitted," Vader said. "Your mother will kill me."

But neither of them moved for a long time—not until the sun was high in the sky, and the day of the coronation had truly begun.

* * *

The ceremony was at noon—at least, that was when the Palace doors opened to allow the hastily-invited guests in. It was two hours before that that Leia found herself standing in the throne room, newly bedecked in white and gold hangings.

It looked unreal.

Coruscanti Weather Control had scheduled brilliant sunlight for the day, and it beamed through the windows to glint off the draperies, the onyx throne, the room filled with light. The diamonds in the ceiling glittered above her.

This was like seeing the world tossed upside down and being oddly happy about the wrongness.

She sensed Luke approaching long before she heard him, his trusty cane tap-tap-tapping against the steps just outside the double doors before he opened them with the Force.

She turned to see him—and burst out laughing. He was wearing white, just like she was, but the slightly puffy sleeves, the pale blue jacket and trousers, the shoes so polished they gleamed. . . Even his cane had been decorated in gold and blue.

"You look brilliant," she said, unable to contain her mirth, "and _so, so uncomfortable_."

"I am!" He tugged at his sleeves, grimacing, but Leia noticed that the collar was intentionally loose about his neck. She smiled. "What are _you _wearing?"

"A plain white dress. Pretty simple. My hair's braided in a cone on the top of my head though, and that's heavy."

"Poor you."

She laughed. "Hey, could be worse. I feel like a princess."

"They need to step it up then, if you're about to be the Empress."

She rolled her eyes. "I think you're nervous."

"I think _you're_ nervous," he shot back, "and you're trying to hide it by pushing it off on me."

She sighed.

"Ha! I was right."

"You were right," she groaned. "I'm about to be crowned, Luke, of course I'm kriffing nervous."

He stepped up to the window with her, and took her hand. "I'll be with you," he promised.

She rubbed the back of his knuckles with her thumb. "I know you will," she murmured. "I know."

"Hey?" He squeezed her hand. "We're together now. We can get through this."

She sighed, and leaned her head against his shoulder; his arm came up around her. Outside, she could see the crowds starting to gather. A _lambda _shuttle was coming in to land—for a moment she amused herself with wondering if it was carrying a governor from a distant planet, and thought of Vilrein; she should reinstall her at Kuat, if her brother's family could spare her. . .

"We can get through this. Together," she murmured.

She closed her eyes and reached out.

Coruscant glimmered with brightness and shadows, as always. But, she realised with a smile, between the death of Palpatine, her and Luke's changes, the new residents at the Imperial Palace and the Jedi who were soon to be reborn. . .

. . .she could already sense a determined shift towards the light.

* * *

**Thanks again for reading!**


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